Shafiqur Rahman Khan is a pioneering leader and activist whose incisive work on some of the most challenging human rights issues of our times continues to break new ground in the field of social and humanitarian change.

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He started off young in his efforts for change in society as a thirteen-year-old political activist from the tribal belt. When he visited some villages and saw hunger, disease and apathy of officials and civil society up close and realised that the radical party he was a part of did not seem to care to tackle these issues, he decided to take it upon himself to work on it.

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He launched Career Development Corner (CDC) in 1999 which played a key role in spreading education consciousness as part of its awareness program among the youth. The aim to provide education and food to poor and marginalized children bore fruitful results and he went on to work to safeguard the rights of migrant labourers and ensure basic education to their children as their right. Realising how Gender was a basic unit of discrimination, he decided to take on graver issues in his desire for building a just, fair and equal society for all people.

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He carried out a 300 km long ‘March against Female Feticide and Gender Inequality’ with a group of friends in 2005 and founded EMPOWER PEOPLE in 2006 for focused attention and intervention on the then-unrecognized issue of bride trafficking. He has been conducting workshops with various duty bearers including states’ highest level police officials with a strategic priority of enforcing women and girls’ rights as human rights. 

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His humble demeanor and enduring patience are his major strengths. In today’s increasingly challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic which revealed an essential structural and societal collapse of reliable emergency response mechanisms and a dearth of constructive vision; Shafiq R Khan continues to be a beacon of hope for marginalized communities. He is dedicatedly developing innovative solutions which are providing relief and much needed succor to alleviate distress and confusion in neglected regions and communities.