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[27 January 2012] - The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held a working meeting on January 26-27, 2012, where the Thematic and Country Rapporteurships were distributed. The Commissioners are Dinah Shelton, Chair; José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, First Vice-Chair; Rodrigo Escobar Gil, Second Vice-Chair; Felipe González, and three Commissioners who took office on January 1, 2012: Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Rosa María Ortiz y Tracy Robinson. The Rapporteurships are now distributed as follows: Commissioner Dinah Shelton, IACHR Chair: Rapporteur for Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Ecuador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Granadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Commissioner José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, First Vice-Chair: Rapporteur for Colombia, Panama and Peru, and Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. Commissioner Rodrigo Escobar Gil, Second Vice-Chair: Rapporteur for Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty. Commissioner Rose-Marie Belle Antoine: Rapporteur for Canadá, Chile, Nicaragua and Paraguay, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Afro Descendants and against Racial Discrmination. Commissioner Felipe González: Rapporteur for Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba and Venezuela, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their Families. Commissioner Rosa María Ortiz: Rapporteur for El Salvador, Haiti and Dominican Republic, and Rapporteur on the Rights of the Child. Commissioner Tracy Robinson: Rapporteur for Honduras, United States and Uruguay, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Women. Commissioners' background Commissioner Dinah Shelton is a citizen of the United States. She 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. Commissioner Shelton is the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law at the George Washington University Law School. Previously, she was Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School. She has also been a Visiting Professor at various universities in the United States and France. Commissioner Shelton also directed the Office of Staff Attorneys at the United States Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit and was Director of Studies at the International Institute of Human Rights. She studied law at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She has been an international law consultant for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and the UN Institute for Training and Research, among others. She has written, co-written, or edited 19 books and authored dozens of book chapters and articles on human rights and international law. 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 Rodrigo Escobar Gil is a citizen of Colombia. He was elected during the 39th OAS General Assembly in June 2009 for the standard four-year term, which began on January 1, 2010. He was a Justice of the Constitutional Court of Colombia in the 2001-2009 period and was its President from February 2007 to February 2008. He was General Director of the Rotating Fund of the Ministry of Justice, as well as a consultant attorney and legal representative for various private companies and public entities for 16 years. He has also been Professor of Public Law at the Pontifical Javeriana University and Sergio Arboleda University, among other universities in Colombia. He serves on the Sergio Arboleda University School of Law's Human Rights Committee and the organizing committee for the university's Institute of Human Rights. He studied law at Javeriana University in Bogotá and earned his doctorate at Complutense University in Madrid. He has written three books and dozens of academic articles, and has given seminars and conferences on human rights and other topics. Commissioner Rose-Marie Belle Antoine has double 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 and holds the Chair as Professor of Law at the University of the West Indies specializing in human rights, financial law, comparative law, administrative law, public service law, discrimination law and labour law. She has also also lectured abroad, including in the United States. Commissioner Antoine has substantial international consultancy experience. She has served as senior legal advisor to virtually all of the governments of the Commonwealth Carribbean 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 eight 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, labour law, free movement of labour, HIV, financial law, anti-drug trafficking and anti-corruption. Commissioner Antoine is both 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, 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 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. Commmissioner Rosa María Ortiz is a citizen of Paraguay. 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 graduated in social communications media and is an expert in children’s human rights. She has been Vice-President of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and adviser on human rights and cultural diversity for the Paraguayan Presidency’s National Secretariat of Culture. She is founder and member of several human rights organizations, including Decidamos, Global, Tekoha, Callescuela and Workshop on Communication and Popular Education. In 2003 she was recognized with the award Paraguayan Women of the Paraguayan Presidency’s Women’s Secretariat, and in 2010 she received the award Peter Benenson for the Defense of Human Rights from the Paraguay Section of Amnesty International. During Alfredo Stroessner’s dicatorship, she worked through ecumenical organizations in favor of the political prisioners of her country. Commissioner Ortiz has offered numerous conferences, workshops and has written articles on the rights of children. 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 University of Yale, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Civil Law from Oxford University. 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. Further Information: