Kalpona Akter

Kalpona Akter (born 1976) is a Bangladeshi labour activist. She is the founder and executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity and was awarded Human Rights Watch's Alison Des Forges award for Extraordinary Activism in 2016.

Career Akter's family moved from Chandpur to Dhaka around 1982, where her father worked as general contractor. In 1988, her father suffered two strokes that left him partially paralysed. Akter, aged 12, left school and started work in a garment factory to support her family. In 1991 or 1992, she met her future husband at her workplace. They married in 1993.

In the same year, the management of Akter's factory announced the workers would not receive overtime pay during Eid al-Fitr. Of 1,500 workers, 93 including Akter decided to strike until the bonuses would be paid out again. After a single day of striking, the company agreed to pay out the bonus for that year, but twenty of the striking workers were fired during the Eid holiday. Through the AFL–CIO's Solidarity Center, they started working together with the newly founded Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF). Akter attended Solidarity Center classes on labour law and rights. Akter and Akhter were released on bail after thirty days in jail.

During a 2015 lecture tour in the US, Akter was detained together with other protesters as they were trying to deliver a protest letter to The Children's Place headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey. She was released after two hours.

Akter was awarded Human Rights Watch's Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism in 2016.