Professor Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Professor of Labour Law & Offshore Financial Law and Tracy Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Gender, Family Law and Constitutional Law, were elected as members of IACHR at the 41st Regular Session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly, held in San Salvador from June 5-7, 2011. Both will serve a four-year term commencing January 1, 2012.
Trinidadian Antoine and Jamaica-born Robinson make history as the first Caribbean women to have ever been elected to the Washington-based human rights body which serves the US, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean. It is also the first time that two CARICOM nationals will sit concurrently on the Commission.
Professor Antoine is an Oxford Commonwealth Scholar and a Cambridge Pegasus Scholar. She holds a doctorate from Oxford University (Balliol College), an LL.M. from Cambridge, an LL.B. from The University of the West Indies and diplomas and certificates with distinction in international human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Her specialist subject areas are Anti-Discrimination Law, Public Law, Labour Law, Offshore Financial Law and Legal Systems.
Professor Antoine has served as senior legal advisor to virtually all of the governments of the Commonwealth Caribbean, extra-regional governments, such as the UK, Venezuela, USA and Canada, and several international and regional organisations, including the European Union, OAS, IADB, the World Bank, CARICOM, OECS, UNICEF, ILO, UNIFEM and UNDCP. She is the author of well-known reports on regional issues including Discrimination, Constitutional Reform, Public Service Reform, Children’s’ Rights/ Juvenile Justice, Mutual Legal Assistance, Women’s Rights, Labour Law, Free Movement of Labour, HIV, Financial Law, Rights Issues in Law Enforcement and Anti-Corruption.
Professor Antoine has published widely in international legal journals on an array of subjects, and is also the author of several books. Published by the prestigious Oxford University Press, her two texts Confidentiality in Offshore Financial Law and Trust and Related Tax Issues in Offshore Financial Law, have been described as ‘path-breaking’ and ‘amazing’ by international jurists. Her first book, Commonwealth Caribbean Law and Legal Systems, published by Routledge Cavendish, London, now into its third edition, is used by universities abroad.
Commissioner Ms. Robinson is one of the principal teachers of Caribbean public law at The UWI, co-directing the undergraduate courses Constitutional Law and Commonwealth Caribbean Human Rights Law and lecturing in Gender, Family Law and Constitutional Law. She graduated from The University of the West Indies in 1991 with a First Class Honours Degree in Law, and is a Rhodes Scholar. In 1996, she joined The UWI Faculty of Law as a lecturer, having completed postgraduate degrees at University of Oxford and Yale Law School, and was called to the Jamaican Bar in 1997.
She is a co-founder of the Faculty of Law UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) whose objective it is to promote human rights and social justice in the Caribbean by undertaking and participating in human rights litigation in collaboration with human rights lawyers and human rights organizations. Robinson has published widely and given presentations on Gender, Family Law and Human Rights issues and has served as a consultant to numerous bodies, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women. Robinson’s professional work concentrates on evidence-informed legal and policy reform aimed at furthering gender equality and children’s rights in the Caribbean. Her work pays close attention to social equality and vulnerabilities aligned to gender and sexuality and the ways in which law can support human development and empowerment.
Professors Antoine and Robinson are founding members of the Coalition against All forms of Sexual Harassment (CASH), a women’s advocacy group established in 2003.