Early Life
Khan grew up in a relatively wealthy family in Bangladesh. She was the star pupil at St Francis Xavier's Green Herald International School where she was the record holder at the school leaving examinations. The daughter of a non-practicing medical doctor Sikander Ali Khan, granddaughter of Cambridge graduate and barrister Ahmed Ali Khan and great granddaughter of an eminent doctor of Calcutta, Asdar Ali Khan who was the personal physician of Syed Hasan Imam. Her uncle Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan was the chief of the Bangladesh Navy. Khan‘s great-great uncle Ghazanfar Ali Khan was the first Muslim Cambridge graduate from Sylhet. Irene’s first cousin Zubaida Rahman is married to Tarique Rahman the son of a former prime minister and a president of Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia. During her upbringing, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) – was fighting for independence from Pakistan. Human rights abuses that occurred during the Bangladesh Liberation War in which Bangladesh achieved independence, helped shape teenage Khan's activist viewpoint. She left Bangladesh as a teenager for school in Northern Ireland. Khan then went to England and studied law at the University of Manchester and then, in the United States, at Harvard Law School. She specialized in public international law and human rights She is the Chancellor of the University of Salford.
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