Regional Director for Penal Reform International in the Middle East and North Africa
Taghreed Jaber is the Regional Director for Penal Reform International (PRI) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She has 20 years of experience working in the field of human rights, 12 of them with PRI in the region. She has an LLM in International Human Rights from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, and experience leading criminal justice reform projects in over 16 countries.
She has led several initiatives focusing on security sector and criminal justice reform and contributed to the drafting of several research and policy papers in addition to her expert work drafting UN documents and guidelines. She was a member of the intergovernmental committee that drafted the UN Rules for the Treatment of Female Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Offenders (the Bangkok Rules) and an expert in the revision process of United Nations Minimum Standard Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners—the Nelson Mandela Rules—and, most recently, in drafting the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty.
Ms. Jaber has led several projects promoting justice for children in the MENA region, focusing on girl child rights and the creation of gender responsive justice systems. She was a member of the steering committee that organized the Justice for Children Global Congress in Paris in 2018 and is currently a member of the steering committee of the coming World Congress on Justice with Children scheduled for November 2021 in Mexico. Her area of expertise is juvenile justice in the Arab world.
