Michelle Loubon

Pres­i­dent Des­ig­nate of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) Sir Charles Michael Den­nis By­ron says he is hop­ing more Cari­com states would come on board when he as­sumes of­fice on Au­gust 17.He made this com­ment dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the CCJ Head­quar­ters at 134 Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.Among those present were CCJ Pres­i­dent Michael De La Bastide and mod­er­a­tor/jour­nal­ist Tony Fras­er. It was con­duct­ed via video con­fer­ence in Guyana, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.To date, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and Be­lize are ful­ly signed on to the Court.

Quizzed on whether he had any con­cerns about the CCJ when he as­sumes of­fice, By­ron said: "I must be con­cerned that on­ly three of the mem­ber states have ac­ced­ed but as I have been ob­serv­ing the de­vel­op­ments in the re­gion, I echo the re­marks made by Pres­i­dent De La Bastide, that, it seems to be that as time goes on, the mem­ber states are get­ting clos­er to do­ing what is nec­es­sary to ac­cede to the Court.

"So I would on­ly hope that as I take of­fice I would wit­ness this de­vel­op­ment which would al­low the Court to dis­charge its func­tions to ben­e­fit as wide a seg­ment of our com­mu­ni­ty as pos­si­ble," added By­ron.But he ad­mit­ted there was "more fact find­ing and dis­cus­sion.""I hope my in­for­ma­tion base would be much broad­er and I look for­ward to dis­cussing much more con­crete plans as they emerge," said By­ron. By­ron re­it­er­at­ed his firm be­lief in the po­ten­tial of the CCJ and its promise for the de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment of the Caribbean. By­ron al­so said he was grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve in this ca­pac­i­ty (Pres­i­dent Des­ig­nate).

Rwan­da ex­pe­ri­ence: 'Deep­er per­spec­tive of hu­man rights glob­al­ly' By­ron's present as­sign­ment is as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Na­tions In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da (IC­TR), Africa. Quizzed on his great­est achieve­ment as Pres­i­dent of IC­TR, By­ron said he had gained "a deep­er per­spec­tive of the ba­sic hu­man rights of peo­ple glob­al­ly."He said: "I ben­e­fit­ed enor­mous­ly from both the ju­ris­dic­tion of our Court which has had to ap­ply rules of in­ter­na­tion­al and crim­i­nal and hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds."By­ron said he had gained sub­stan­tive­ly from the col­le­gial in­ter­ac­tion with judges from around the world.He added: "We have sat with and worked with judges from a wide va­ri­ety of ju­di­cial tra­di­tions and back­grounds and ex­pe­ri­ence. I think it has been a very re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ence."

Con­fi­dence in Caribbean ju­rists

By­ron al­so ex­pressed his con­fi­dence in the qual­i­ty of Caribbean ju­rists."One of the in­evitable con­se­quences of that in­ter­ac­tion has been a re­vival in my con­fi­dence in the qual­i­ty of Caribbean ju­rists. I have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on my as­so­ci­a­tion and knowl­edge of col­leagues through­out the re­gion."I have al­so had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­min­is­trate a large ju­di­cial in­sti­tu­tion and al­though the num­ber of judges is more than 23, not much more than that of the CCJ. Yet, I have had a large sup­port staff of moe than 1,200 peo­ple ad­e­quate­ly fund­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN)."Dur­ing his tenure, By­ron said there was the need for ac­count­ing and deal­ing with the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. He al­so said there were chal­lenges in­clud­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

"I think the lessons learnt from the ex­pe­ri­ences have been very im­por­tant. The In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da, like the CCJ, was some­thing very new.It start­ed op­er­at­ing on­ly in 1994 and it has had a lim­it­ed time span be­cause we have had to learn the process of in­ter­na­tion­al jus­tice at the time that it start­ed and now we are hav­ing to en­gage in the un­usu­al ac­tiv­i­ty of clos­ing the Court as well," added By­ron. When he as­sumes his re­gion­al ap­point­ment, By­ron will be bring­ing the skills he honed from his in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence to the ta­ble.By­ron said: "I think the lessons learned are of great val­ue as I re­turn to my home base in the Caribbean. I am try­ing to en­sure I do my part to give my col­leagues a well func­tion­ing court.

About Sir By­ron

An em­i­nent­ly qual­i­fied By­ron won the Lee­wards Is­lands Schol­ar­ship in 1960 and went on to read law at Fitzwilliam Col­lege, Cam­bridge. He grad­u­at­ed with an MA and LLB.

Af­ter 16 years of pri­vate prac­tice, he went on to serve as High Court judge, Jus­tice of Ap­peal and then Chief Jus­tice of the East­ern Caribbean Supreme Court.

While there, Sir Den­nis led the East­ern Caribbean Supreme Court Ju­di­cial Re­form Pro­gramme which in­clud­ed a Code of Ethics for judges.

His spe­cial in­ter­est in ju­di­cial ed­u­ca­tion ac­tiv­i­ties has led to the ap­point­ment of the Com­mon­wealth Ju­di­cial In­sti­tute.

In 2000, he was knight­ed by Queen Eliz­a­beth II and was ap­point­ed a mem­ber of Her Majesty's Privy Coun­cil in 2004.