Please join Faegre & Benson LLP and

Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights’

Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Project for:

An Update on Liberia: Progress and Challenges in Rebuilding the Country

presented by

Samuel Kofi Woods, II

Thursday, August 31, 2006

5:00 – 7:00 PM

at

Faegre & Benson LLP

Century Room
2200 Wells Fargo Center
90 South Seventh Street
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402

Samuel Kofi Woods, a human rights lawyer and the Minister of Labor in President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s cabinet, will present information regarding current conditions in Liberia and the TRC process.  Kofi is on The Advocates' Board of Directors and was instrumental in initiating The Advocates’ involvement with the Liberian TRC.  Request will be made for two CLE credits.  Please RSVP to Kim Babine at kbabine@mnadvocates.org. 

Speaker Biography

Samuel Kofi Woods, II is presently the Minister of Labor of the Republic of Liberia. Prior to his appointment in January of this year, he has been committed to more than 35 years of human rights work in his native land, Liberia, Africa and the world.

Woods started as a youth activist in some of the slum communities of Liberia where he was born and later became a student leader at the University of Liberia. He was imprisoned, banned from employment and travels by the regime of Samuel Doe in 1987 after university graduation for his commitment to academic freedom and social justice.

In 1991, Woods worked with the Catholic Bishops in Liberia to establish the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace which later became Liberia’s Foremost Human Rights Institution. The Commission documented abuses during Liberia brutal civil war, represented indigent people including journalists and became the focus of human rights advocacy in Liberia.

Woods is the 1994 Reebok Human Rights Award Recipient. He received the Award while serving as National Director of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Liberia. After several threats to his life, Woods left for exile in 1998 and studied in the Netherlands where he earned a Masters Degree in Public International Law from Leiden University and received various academic diplomas. He received the Benemerenti Award of Merit from Pope John Paul in 1999 and a Special Recognition for his towering efforts to end impunity in Liberia when he was honored by the Special Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 2004. This year he was honored at the University of Minnesota by the African Students Association with three different distinctions. In July of this year, he was honored by the American Bar Association with the International Law Reformer Award in Istanbul, Turkey.

In 2001, Woods joined the International Human Rights Law Group now Global Rights based in Washington DC and traveled to Sierra Leone to assist with the setting up as well as supporting efforts on the transitional justice process (Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court).

In 2002, he founded the Foundation for International Dignity (FIND) where he served as Regional Representative until being asked to join the government of Madam Ellen Johnson as Minister of Labor. FIND is a regional organization which he founded in June 2002 to focus on the plight of refugees and displaced communities in the Mano River Region (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone).

Woods has pursued a case of precedence against the Liberian Government with the African Commission Human and Peoples' Rights on behalf of detained journalists in Liberia.  Last year, he was one of the human rights advocates who participated in the landmark case against Firestone/Bridgeway in the United States and campaigned against exploitative and child labor on the plantation in Liberia.

In 1997, he was involved with the Carter Center and the National Democratic Institute in conducting training for the network of local elections observers in Liberia and served as an observer in the 2002 December Kenyan Elections as part of the Carter Center Observers Mission.