Image source World Council of Churches

1918-1996

Mrs Justice Annie Ruth Baeta Jiagge was born in Lome, Togo on the 7th of October 1918 to Reverend Robert Domingo Baeta and his wife Mrs Henrietta Baeta (nee Sedode) of Keta and Agbozunne.  She was baptized on the 1st of December 1918 in Lome by her father.

Annie had her early education at the Bremen Mission school in Lome.  She did not stay long enough to have French education because her parents wanted her to be educated at Keta in the English language.  Aged 6, she was sent to her maternal grandmother, one of the two daughters of a Brazilian merchant Cesar Cequiera de Lima.  After her grandmother died, she was sent to live with her uncle C.F. Van Lare who was at the time an agent for F&A Swanzy Millers and John Walkden.  She took her Standard Seven examination in 1933 and passed with distinction continuing to Achimota College where she obtained the Teachers Certificate ‘A‘ in 1937.

She was prefect of her house – Slessor House in her last year and awarded a form prize each year that she was in Achimota.  Her teachers noticed that Annie was an exceptional student and encouraged her to aim for the Cambridge School Certification in addition.  They assisted her by giving her extra tuition outside normal classes in Mathematics and Latin.  Sandy Fraser the son of the first principal of Achimota College was particularly struck by her talent and taught her Mathematics whilst Robert Kwami taught her Latin.  Although she was not able to do the School Certificate alongside the Teacher Training course at Achimota, yet she took the London Matriculation in 1944 when she was a teacher in Keta and passed.

She was Headmistress and Schoolteacher at the Evangelical Presbyterian Girls School from 1940 to 1946.

In 1946, Annie made a startling decision which was to alter the course of her life.   She decided to give up teaching and embark on a legal career.  As she was fond of putting it herself, “In our family it was taken for granted that I would follow my mother’s footsteps and become a teacher.  I did this for some time and confessed to my brother Christian that I did not see my future in teaching and that I wanted to study Law.   He made enquiries for me to do Law at London University there being no facility for the study of law in the Gold Coast at the time.”   Annie proceeded to London to study law in 1946 at the London School of Economics and Political Science and also to Lincoln’s Inn. She received her LLB in 1949 and was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn the following year. Baëta also participated in religious and social work during her free time in London. She worked with youth camps organized by the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and was elected to the Executive Committee of the World YWCA during her final years as a student.

Annie returned to the Gold Coast in 1950 and practiced law in the chambers of the late Adumoah Bossman.  On the 10th of January she married Mr. Fred Jiagge at Achimota School where both had been students in the 1930s.    She accepted advice from her family and gave up the bar to join the bench in June 1953.  In 1954, she began regularly attending the conferences of the World Council of Churches. From 1955 to 1960, she was president of the YWCA. In 1959, she became a judge for the Circuit Court.

After learning of a young woman who was raped in Accra after coming there from the countryside for a job interview, Jiagge sought government assistance to provide safe accommodation for visiting women. She secured an audience with Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and convinced him of the project’s importance. She spearheaded a successful campaign in 1961 that raised substantial funds for a YWCA women’s hostel. That year she became a judge of the High Court of Justice. From 1961 to 1976 she was a council member of the University of Ghana. In 1962 she was appointed to represent Ghana on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She was asked to chair the Commission to Investigate the Assets of Senior Public Servants and Named Political Leaders in 1966. She championed women’s rights through her work at the United Nations, representing Ghana until 1972. In 1966, she was elected rapporteur of the Commission. During a meeting in Iran in 1967, the Commission was charged with preparing a document on the elimination of discrimination against women. It was sent to UN member-states for comment and was later adopted.

The Declaration was an important precursor to the legally binding 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Jiagge was elected chair of the Commission’s 21st session in 1968.

She was selected by Nkrumah to represent Ghana at Uganda’s independence celebration in Kampala.

Jiagge was awarded the Grand Medal of Ghana and the Gimbles International Award for Humanitarian Works in 1969. She was named a judge of the Court of Appeal that same year, the highest court in Ghana at the time. She was the first female judge of the Court of Appeal. She was awarded an honorary law degree from the University of Ghana in 1974. In 1975, she founded the Ghana National Council on Women and Development and was its first chair. As chair, she convened a meeting of Ghanaian women to learn their views on Equality, Development and Peace, the theme of the 1975 International Women’s Conference in Mexico. Jiagge also served as a president of the World Council of Churches from 1975 to 1983. In 1979, she was a member of the constituent assembly which wrote the constitution of Ghana’s Third Republic. She was the World Council of Churches’ moderator for their Programme to Combat Racism from 1984 to 1991 and mobilized against South Africa’s system of apartheid.

Jiagge was appointed President of the Court of Appeal in 1980. That year she led the Ghanaian delegation again to the International Women’s Conference in Copenhagen. She remained President of the Court of Appeal until her retirement in 1983. She helped plan the Fourth World Conference on Women as a member of the UN Secretary-General’s advisory group that year. In 1985 she served on a United Nations panel that conducted Public Hearings on the Activities of Transnational Corporations in South Africa and Namibia. She also served on the Committee of Experts who drafted Ghana’s Constitution in 1991.

From 1993 until her death, Jiagge served on Ghana’s Council of State. She died on 12 June 1996 in Accra. The Justice Annie Jiagge Memorial Lectures were established by the Ministry of Women and Children in 2009. A boarding house, the Annie Baëta Jiagge House, formerly, House 17, at her alma mater, Achimota School was named in her memory in recognition of her role as a trailblazer in the legal profession in Ghana.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jiagge