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IACHR
Press Release
IACHR Elects New Board
March 19, 2012
Washington, D.C. - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today elected its new board. The board of officers is composed of José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez (Mexico), Chair; Tracy Robinson (Jamaica), 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 144th regular period of sessions. The other members of the IACHR are Dinah Shelton (United States), Rodrigo Escobar Gil (Colombia), Rosa Maria Ortiz (Paraguay), and Rose-Marie Belle Antoine (St Luica and Trinidad and Tobago). The Executive Secretary is Santiago A. Canton (Argentina).
Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez is a citizen of Mexico. He was elected during the 39th regular period of sessions of the OAS General Assembly in June 2009 for the standard four-year term, which began on January 1, 2010. He is a researcher in constitutional law, human rights, the judiciary, and comparative law, among other areas, at the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Previously, he served for 16 years as a Magistrate on Mexico's highest electoral courts, first in the Central Chamber of the Federal Electoral Court and then in the Higher Chamber of the Electoral Court of the Judiciary. He earned a Doctor of Law degree with honors from UNAM, and a Master of Comparative Law from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author or co-author of 8 books and the coordinator or editor of another 15, and he has written more than 100 articles for academic publications.
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, 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 Yale Law School, as well as a Bachelor’s of Civil Law from Oxford University.
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, and was re-elected in 2011 for the second term, , which began on 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 holds a Master of International Law degree from American University and a Master of Advanced Human Rights Studies from Carlos III University in Madrid. 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 matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly and who do not represent their countries of origin or residence.
No. 30/12