In 1992 she was recruited by the US agency Helen Keller International as Policy Advisor and contributed to both a national nutritional surveillance project and to an innovative homestead gardening programme.

In 2002 she left HKI to take up the post of Country Director of Action Aid in Bangladesh, a job for which she was ideally suited, as the agency has programmes in health, development and social justice.

Some 250 people are blinded or maimed in Bangladesh each year by having acid thrown on their face, many of them women because of their refusal to accept the advances of a suitor, but also a growing number of men, often because of disputes over land.

The universal nature of her Nasreen Huq's life was reflected by the fact that Buddhist, Hindu and Christian prayers were said at her funeral services in addition to receiving the normal Muslim rites.

Her sudden death has led to theories that it was linked to a controversial plan for an open cast coal mine that Nasreen Huq was campaigning against,[4] though this has not been proven.