Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born 28 January 1948) served as President of Liberia from 2 August 1997 to 11 August 2003. He was once one of Africa's most prominent warlords during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s and was elected president at the end of that conflict. He was subsequently forced into exile, and is currently being held in the United Nations Detention Unit on the premises of the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden, location Scheveningen in The Hague, and on trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Charles McArthur Taylor was born in Arthington, a town near Monrovia, on 28 January 1948 to Nelson and Bernice Taylor. His mother was a member of the Gola ethnic group. According to most reports his father was an Americo-Liberian, although other sources claim he was actually Afro-Trinidadian. As a young man Taylor was very interested in the Slave Trade and American-Liberian Relations. Taylor was a student at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts, from 1972 to 1977, earning a degree in economics. Taylor took the name 'Ghankay' later on, possibly to please and curry favor with the indigenous people.

In 1979, he led a demonstration at the Liberian Mission to the United Nations in New York City, protesting then-president of Liberia William Tolbert who was on a state visit to the U.S. at the time. Tolbert publicly debated Taylor, but Taylor made the mistake of insinuating he would seize the Liberian Mission by force, which led to his arrest by New York police. He was later released and invited back to Liberia by Tolbert. Taylor supported the 12 April 1980 bloody coup led by Samuel Kanyon Doe, which saw the murder of William Tolbert and the seizure of power by Doe (the first president of non Americo-Liberian descent). Taylor was appointed to a high position in Doe’s government in the General Services Agency of Liberia, a position that left him in charge of purchasing for the Liberian government, but was sacked in May 1983 for embezzling almost $1,000,000 and sending the funds to an American bank account.