UWI Mona Senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Tracy Robinson has been elected to the Board of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The board of officers elected on March 20 is composed of Tracy Robinson (Jamaica), Chair; Rose Marie Antoine (Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago), First Vice-Chair; and Felipe González (Chile), Second Vice-Chair. The election was held, in accordance with the IACHR rules of procedure, at the beginning of the Commission’s 150th regular Period of Sessions. The other members of the IACHR are José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, Rosa María Ortiz, Paulo Vannuchi and James Cavallaro. The Executive Secretary is Emilio Alvarez Icaza (Mexico).
Commissioner Tracy Robinson is a citizen of Jamaica. She was elected at the 41st OAS General Assembly in June 2011 for the standard four-year term, which began on January 1, 2012. She is a lawyer and teaches Gender and the Law, Constitutional Law and Commonwealth Caribbean Human Rights, among other law subjects, at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. She has been a consultant for international agencies such as the United Nations Fund for Women and UNICEF, and she has advised Caribbean governments on topics related to legislation on gender and children rights, among others. Commissioner Robinson has been editor of the Caribbean Law Bulletin and she has written and published reports on a range of topics, including gender, the rights of LGTBI persons, sexual harassment, sexual rights, sex work and the law, and the rights of the child. She has a Bachelor of Law from University of the West Indies and an LLM from the University of Yale, as well as a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from Oxford University.
Commissioner Rose-Marie Belle Antoine has dual citizenship of Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. She was elected at the 41st OAS General Assembly in June 2011 for the standard four-year term, which began on January 1, 2012. She is a lawyer, Professor and Dean of the University of the West Indies, specializing in human rights, financial law, comparative law, administrative law, public service law, discrimination law and labor law. She has also lectured abroad, including in the United States. Commissioner Antoine has substantial international consultancy experience. She has served as senior legal advisor to all of the governments of the Commonwealth Caribbean and to governments outside of the region, such as the UK, Venezuela, USA and Canada, and to several international and regional organizations. These include the European Union, UNICEF, UNIFEM, the ILO, the IADB, the World Bank, and the OAS, among others. She is an award-winning author who has written eleven books and numerous reports and articles and drafted laws on a wide range of topics, including discrimination, constitutional reform, public service reform, juvenile justice, mutual legal assistance, women’s rights, health, sexual harassment, trafficking in persons, labor law, free movement of labor, HIV, financial law, anti-drug trafficking and anti-corruption. Commissioner Antoine is an Oxford Commonwealth Scholar and a Cambridge Pegasus Scholar, holding a doctorate from Oxford University, an LL.M. from Cambridge and an LL.B. from the University of the West Indies. Professor Antoine also holds diplomas and certificates in international human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.
Commissioner Felipe González is a citizen of Chile. He was elected during the 37th regular period of sessions of the OAS General Assembly in 2007 for the standard four-year term, which began on January 1, 2008. He was reelected in 2011 for a second term, which started January 1, 2012. He was the IACHR Chair in 2010. Commissioner González is Professor of International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law at Chile’s Diego Portales University. He founded and directed that university’s Human Rights Center, where from 2002 to 2006 he managed the preparation and publication of an Annual Report on Human Rights in Chile. He also founded and coordinated a Latin American Network of Legal Human Rights Clinics. He is S.J.D. from the Carlos III University of Madrid, and he holds a Master of Law degree from American University and a Master of Advanced Human Rights Studies from Carlos III University. He is a Professor at the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University and a Visiting Professor at Carlos III University. Previously he has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Lund University, the University of Deusto, and the University of Alcalá de Henares. He also worked for the International Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights), first in Washington, D.C., and then in Santiago, Chile.
A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has a mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this area. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in an individual capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.
Source: myspot.mona.uwi.edu
