Juanita Jarrett

Liberia (Regional Expert: Mano River Area)

With a new interim government in place, Liberia is seeking to end more than half a century of autocratic rule and over a decade of civil war. Juanita Jarrett is chair of the Women’s Non-Governmental Organization Secretariat of Liberia, an umbrella organization of legal, religious, and peace groups. She is a founding member and the former national focal point for the Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), which convenes women from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—many of them current and former ministers and other government officials—to facilitate communication and broker peace among their governments. An experienced attorney, Ms. Jarrett was the first secretary general of the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL), through which she has provided legal aid to indigent women and children. Realizing the special needs of youthful offenders, particularly those exposed to violent conflict, Ms. Jarret played a vital role in advocacy and lobbying that led to the establishment of Liberia’s first juvenile court. Across Liberia and in displaced persons camps, she has facilitated workshops advocating an end to sexual abuse and domestic and gender-based violence. She serves on the boards of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church and the Catholic Educational Secretariat in Liberia. She holds a bachelor of laws degree with honors from the University of Leeds in England.

Ms. Jarrett’s peace-building activities include:

• interviewing rebel commanders in Monrovia, gaining their trust, learning their demands, and presenting results and recommendations to the government prior to the 1997 election of President Charles Taylor;
• representing MARWOPNET at ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) ECOWAS summits and lobbying heads of state to intervene for an end to the violence in the Mano River region;
• conducting workshops on human rights violations with soldiers and other security personnel;
• authoring the paper “The Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Women: The Right to Work” for the pre-Beijing Conference on Women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and
• participating in gender analysis and human rights workshops sponsored by international organizations, including the Carter Center, the UN, and domestic agencies such as the Ministry of Gender and Development and the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church.

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