Zainab Bangura
.jpg)
Haja Zainab Bangura Hawa (born 18 December 1959) is a Sierra Leonean politician and social activist who has been serving as the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) since 2018. She served as the second United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict with the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations from 2012 to 2017, in succession to the first holder of the post, Margot Wallström. In 2017 she was succeeded by Pramila Patten.
In 2007, Bangura became Sierra Leone's foreign minister in the government of President Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People's Congress (APC) Party. She was the second woman to serve in that post, following Shirley Gbujama who held that position from 1996 to 1997. She served as Minister of Health and Sanitation from 2010 to 2012.
Quotes
[edit]- Sexual violence is being used as a “tactic of terror” to target religious and ethnic minorities and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities
- The third trend, which seems to come in a much clearer way, is that sexual violence in conflict is being used to forcefully displace people. People are forced out of their communities and off their land because the land is rich in natural resources or because groups want to use it to grow narcotics as is the case in Colombia.
- think the biggest challenge we have is a lack of understanding about the strategies that these people use and I think that has made it extremely difficult to access them, to engage them, to understand what is driving them and what they do
- The most important thing is to make sure we have more community engagement, make sure that communities who are involved in this crime, as well as community and religious leaders give us a better understanding of the extent of the crime, the people who have been targeted and to respond in terms of services for the victims
- It’s not easy to deal with sexual violence because it requires capacity-building, providing technical assistance and support, changing laws, working with the judiciary to make sure that this crime is investigated and that the perpetrators are prosecuted
- We cannot stop the crime taking place as long as there is conflict so we need to end the conflict but in the meanwhile we also need to give hope to these women.
