When I was a little girl, I always wanted Bangladesh to be famous. I did not like that whenever people asked me where I was from I would have to explain, "Bangladesh, this tiny country on the East of India." Why could people not just know where my motherland was?

Shahbagh Square (Shahbag er Moar) in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, transformed into a tangible human ocean this week as ordinary Bangladeshis joined in solidarity to demand the death penalty for the leader of the country's largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, well-known war-criminal, Abdul Quader Mollah.

His sentencing earlier...

The brutal gang-rape and death of a 23-year-old female medical student in India has prompted outrage and horror around the world. The physiotherapy student was tortured and raped by a group of six men on Dec. 16 armed with a metal bar on a private bus in New...

When I was growing up in Bangladesh, Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi amazed me. Burma is right next door to us geographically, but as a little girl all I understood about the military junta there was primarily through pictures.

I just could not wrap my head around what kind of...

Last year when I was heavily pregnant, my husband took me to a gala dinner his company was throwing at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Washington, DC. I could not have been more excited.

You see, for the past two years, Shayan and his partners had worked tirelessly trying to...

The post- Liberation War generation of Bangladesh know stories from 1971 all too well. Our families are framed and bound by the history of this war. What Bangladeshi family has not been touched by the passion, famine, murders and blood that gave birth to a new nation as it seceded...

As a mother to an 8-month-old, you would think the main reason I am not getting enough sleep would be the new baby in our home. But really I stay up late into the night while my husband and daughter sleep because, with iPhone tightly in the palm, I am...

British newspaper the Guardian recently revealed thousands of personal emails it uncovered between Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, and his wife, Asma.

Amidst the beginnings of civil war brewing in Syria, and the slaughtering of civilians in Homs, one would be forgiven to think that the Assads...

Demi Moore's recent divorce from her younger husband, Ashton Kutcher, and subsequent trip to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction have been documented all too well in the tabloids. We read the headlines and exclaim over our shock and horror at Moore's "pathetic" behavior. Unable to...

In the wake of the Arab Spring, Saudi women have taken the wheel. They did it literally by defying the country's notorious driving ban and figuratively by attempting to advance their rights in a country that allows women almost no rights without male guardianship...

A predawn raid today increased clashes between the military and civilian populations in Egypt, triggering women in Cairo to mobilize around the ongoing violence which in recent days has targeted women.

This week horrifying images of just how brutal the military can be towards women went viral. The

I can't tell you how much I relied on my girlfriends for my sanity in my twenties. During our student days at the University of Virginia (UVA), we were each other's roommates, psychiatrists, parents and siblings. We stayed up late talking about the men in our lives, mulling over what...

At the end of October, the UN projected that the world's population reached 7 billion, a scary milestone amidst increasing global political and economic instability. More people will only place increased pressure on our environment, on the world's habitats, forests, and resources such as water. But how does investing in...

It is not just congressmen, like Anthony Weiner, or pop stars like Rihanna that are doing it. In fact, 1/4 kids admit to sending a nude photo of themselves before having left the house. So how do parents prevent their kids from the world of sexting...

There is no doubt that the recent revolution in Egypt got the wheels of the Arab Spring rolling. But just as quick as women were to flood the corners of Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo in the hopes of a democratic Egypt, their voices were soon sidelined.

This...

Very little surprised me about IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged attempted rape of a New York hotel maid, and even less shocked me about his sketchy record on harassing women. Hello, can we say rich-white-male-power-entitlement-issues?

Apparently Strauss-Kahn's "women problem" was an open secret amongst journalists, especially...

Anyone remember what one of the most striking images to surface from Iran's uprising last summer over the fallout from the country's so-called elections were? Iranian women protesting.

The world was shocked to see Iranians, 70% of whom are under that age of 25-years-old, pour onto the streets demanding their...

I never understood the controversy over breastfeeding. In fact, until I moved to the States, I did not even know there was such a controversy over feeding your child with your breast. Is that not what they are meant for anyway?

Apparently not. Though the beautiful image of...

When I was 23 yrs old, I left my first job fresh out of college, most of my friends I made in college, and moved from Washington, D.C. to Italy. I knew no one, didn't speak the language, and had one of the most incredible years of my life. It...

Former National Security Adviser and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger never supported the liberation of Bangladesh, famously declaring in 1971, the year Bangladesh won its independence from Pakistan, that "the place is and always will be a basket case."

In the years that followed it seemed as though Bangladesh...