Pela Boker-Wilson

Ms. Pela Boker-Wilson is a distinguished Liberian human rights lawyer, educator, and international expert. She serves as an Independent Expert on the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), having been elected by States Parties in 2023 for a four-year term beginning in January 2024 . In this capacity, she serves as a country rapporteur and contributes to the Committee’s efforts to combat racial discrimination and promote equality and inclusion worldwide.

She also served as Rapporteur for CERD General Recommendation No. 40 on reparatory justice for the harms and continuing consequences of colonialism, the trafficking and trade in enslaved Africans, and racialized chattel slavery, guiding the Committee’s work through to the Recommendation’s adoption.

With more than 15 years of experience spanning government service, academia, and international organizations, Ms. Boker-Wilson is an Assistant Professor at the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, University of Liberia, and a member of the International Advisory Board of the University’s Center for Diaspora and Migration Studies. She previously served as a Commissioner of Liberia’s Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR), where she advanced accountability, human rights protection, and access to justice.

She holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University Law Center, a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) with First Class Honors from the University of Liberia, and is a United Nations Public International Law Fellow of The Hague Academy of International Law. Admitted to the Supreme Court Bar of Liberia, her expertise includes international human rights law, racial justice, gender equality, migration, trafficking in persons, nationality, access to justice, legal scholarship, and policy development.