Annie Jiagge

Annie Ruth Jiagge, born Annie Baeta, was a lawyer and judge who became the first woman judge in Ghana and the Commonwealth, and one of the authors of the UN declaration against discrimination against women. She was born in Lome on 7 October 1918 and died in Accra on 12 June 1996.

Teacher, lawyer, judge

She was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and grew up with her grandmother in Keta. After Achimota College she taught at the E.P. Girls' School and raised money to rebuild it after the sea destroyed its buildings. She went to the London School of Economics in 1946 against the advice of Gold Coast men who told her law was too hard for a woman, graduated in 1949 and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1950. She became a magistrate in 1953, a circuit judge in 1959 and a High Court judge in 1961. In 1966 she chaired the commission that investigated the assets of Nkrumah-era politicians and officials. She joined the Court of Appeal in 1969 and was its president from 1980 to 1983.

Women's rights

She represented Ghana on the UN Commission on the Status of Women from 1962 to 1972. In Tehran in 1967 she and other members drafted, in one night, the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the forerunner of the CEDAW convention. She founded Ghana's National Council on Women and Development in 1975, helped start Women's World Banking, was a president of the World Council of Churches and led its programme to combat racism. She sat on the committee of experts that drafted proposals for the 1992 Constitution and on the Council of State until her death. A house at Achimota School is named after her.