Barbara Sangare (Bangura) is a peace activist with more than twenty years experience in community peacebuilding, peace processes and WPS, with particular expertise on elections violence and mediation. She established and coordinated a women’s NGO called Grassroots Empowerment for Self-Reliance (GEMS) in Sierra Leone from 1998 to 2012 through which she trained community women on peacebuilding and mediated in community peace and reconciliation processes after the ten-year civil war in Sierra Leone.

Barbara was the International Coordinator of the Women’s Situation Room for peaceful elections in Africa from 2013 to January 2019 during which she co-mediated elections-related conflicts between political parties and Elections Management Bodies, the most noteworthy being during the presidential elections of Kenya in 2013, and more recently in the tense presidential elections of March 2018 in Sierra Leone. 

Barbara Sangare is a member of Women Mediators across the Commonwealth (WMC), a network hosted by Conciliation Resources which connects women with a broad range of mediation knowledge and experience.