Aaron Weah, PhD

Senior Fellow and Dirctor

Aaron Weah is a Liberian transitional justice activist and researcher. He has worked across sectors—in civil society, government, and international non-governmental organisations—for more than fifteen years. As a programme associate for the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), he provided technical assistance to the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

In the same portfolio, he worked with grassroots communities, and together they explored solutions to the vexing questions of post-conflict memorialisation. He was a policy analyst at the Liberia Governance Commission (2012–2014). He collaborated with relevant ministries, agencies, and commissions in that role and drafted the Strategic Road Map for Peacebuilding, Reconciliation, and National Healing. The Strategic Road Map for Reconciliation is conceived as an outgrowth of the TRC Final Report, a post-TRC instrument dedicated to implementing restorative justice measures. He also worked as Country Director for the Washington, DC-based Search for Common Ground, supporting Liberia’s peacebuilding agenda. Beyond Liberia, he continues to be engaged in Africa—specifically in countries such as The Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone—serving in a strategic technical capacity on peace and conflict, human rights, and transitional justice matters.

He recently consulted with the World Bank Group (WBG) and drafted the literature on Liberia Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA). Few years earlier, he led the qualitative assessment of the RRA in the Gambia. He has written and published on peacebuilding, memorialisation, and transitional justice, and some of his works have appeared in the Journal of the International Peace Institute (IPI), International Review of the Red Cross, and the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Oxford University Press). He writes as a columnist for the France-based Justice Info and writes the Liberian chapter for the Africa Yearbook published by Brill.

He holds a PhD from the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI), School of Law, Ulster University, United Kingdom. He is specialised in grassroots memorialisation, a sociology of knowledge, the connection between social memory, the social environment producing it and the implication for society.

BBA: Management, Stella Maria Polytechnic University MA: International Relations, University of Liberia