Born: 16 January 1939, Liberia
Died: 8 January 2017
Country most active: Liberia
Also known as: Ruth Sando Fahnbullah
Liberian politician Ruth Sando Perry was the first woman to be head of state in a modern African country, as chair of Liberia’s third transitional government in the 1990s. Fellow Liberian Ellen Johnson Sirleaf would later become the first elected female president in Africa (2006-18), in part thanks to the precedent set by Perry. In her 2009 autobiography, Sirleaf wrote of Perry, “She was given no real authority, staff or money with which to do her job. It was a surprise to many, then, when using only the moral authority of her office and her own sense of right and wrong, she determinedly used her voice to scold the warlords into disarming their troops and submitting to the election process.”
After completing her degree in education at the University of Liberia, Perry worked as a teacher and married, though she was widowed young and left the single mother of seven children and switched careers into banking to support her family. She went on to run for the Liberian senate in 1985, winning as part of the Unity Party and pushing legislation to protect the rights of women and children. In late 1989, however, a coup led to 14 years of civil war, with an estimated 200,000 deaths and more than half of the country’s 3 million people displaced.
Perry stayed, advocating for peace with organizations like the Liberian Women’s Initiative and the Mano River Union Women for Peace Network. Despite the work of groups like these, women were often excluded from peace talks, but Perry’s prominence in the movement eventually led to her being a delegate at a peace conference in Abuja in August 1996. There, she was nominated as the civilian chair of the country’s third transitional government’s ruling council. She was one of three civilians, balancing the three leaders of the main armed factions in the conflict, including Charles Taylor. Led by Perry, the council was assigned several impossible tasks to be completed within less than 12 months:
disarm and disband the factions
facilitate the return of refugees from other countries
plan and implement a transparent election and turn over governance to democratically elected leaders.
In the subsequent elections, Taylor won the presidency, but his regime soon kicked off a new civil war that lasted from 1999 to 2003 and ended with his removal and extradition to The Hague to face charges of war crimes.
For her part, Perry returned to her advocacy work, including joining United Nations and Organization for African Unity/African Union missions to other war-torn countries. She also established the non-profit Perry Center to support peace and women’s and children’s causes.