Zainab Bangura

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Zainab Hawa Bangura (born December 18, 1959 in Yonibana, Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone) is a Sierra Leonean politician and social activist. In 2007 Mrs. Bangura became Sierra Leone's foreign minister in the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) party.[1]

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[edit] Early life

Mrs. Bangura was born "Zainab Sesay" in Yonibana village, Tonkolili District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. She hails from the Temne ethnic group. Born into a rural family of limited means, she attended Mathora Secondary School near Magburaka and the Annie Walsh School in the capital city of Freetown. After graduating from Sierra Leone's Fourah Bay College, she studied in the United Kingdom for advanced diplomas in insurance. While in her early 30s, she became vice-president of one of her country's largest insurance companies.

[edit] Public life

Mrs. Bangura began her career as a social activist during the difficult period when Sierra Leone was ruled by the N.P.R.C. military government, starting with consciousness-raising efforts among urban market women. In 1994 she founded Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation (W.O.M.E.N.), the first non-partisan women's rights group in the country. The following year she co-founded the Campaign for Good Governance (CGG). Using CGG as her platform, she campaigned for the national elections that finally drove the NPRC junta from power in 1996. These were Sierra Leone's first democratic elections in 25 years.

During Sierra Leone's civil war (1991-2000) Mrs. Bangura spoke out forcefully against the atrocities committed against the civilian population by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and was targeted for assassination several times by that group. She also spoke against the corruption in the civilian government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. In 2002 she ran against Kabbah for the presidency of Sierra Leone, departing for the first time from her accustomed role as a non-partisan civil society activist. She won less than one percent of the vote, and her Movement for Progress (MOP) party failed to gain any seats in Sierra Leone's parliament.

After the 2002 elections Mrs. Bangura founded the National Accountability Group (NAG) whose mission was to fight against official corruption and to promote transparancy and accountability in government. In 2006 she left Sierra Leone for neighboring Liberia where she was appointed Director of the Civil Affairs Office in the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and given responsibility for the reconstruction of 16 Liberian ministries and 30 government agencies following that country's devastating civil war.

Mrs. Bangura returned to Sierra Leone in 2007 after Ernest Bai Koroma won the presidency in a hard-fought national election. President Koroma campaigned on a reform platform, and his appointment of Mrs. Bangura as foreign minister was widely seen as a confidence-building measure. Bangura is well known for her outspoken criticism of official corruption and her strong support for human rights and the rule of law.

[edit] Awards

Bangura has won several prestigious international awards for her promotion of democracy and human rights in Africa, including: the African International Award of Merit for Leadership (Nigeria, 1999); the Human Rights Award given by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (New York, 2000); the Bayard Rustin Humanitarian Award given by the A. Philip Randolph Institute (Washington, DC, 2002); and the Democracy Award given by the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington, DC, 2006).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sierra Leone announces Ten Cabinet Ministers; More later: Sierra Leone News

[edit] Sources

Preceded by
Momodu Koroma		 Foreign Minister of Sierra Leone
2007-present		 Succeeded by
incumbent
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