INCOMING president of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Justice Adrian Saunders has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the Global Judicial Integrity Network by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) Global Programme for the Implementation of the Doha Declaration, the CCJ said Monday in a statement.

Justice Saunders who will assume the post as president of the CCJ on July 4, 2018, is also the Chairman of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers (CAJO). The 10-member Advisory Board will help identify priority challenges and emerging topics in judicial integrity and assist judiciaries in addressing those challenges as they arise, the statement noted.

The other members of the Advisory Board are Duro Sessa, President of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia and President of the Consultative Council of European Judges; Masood Bin Muhammad Al-Ameri, Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Council, Qatar; Maria Theresa Moura, Minister of the Superior Court of Justice in Brazil and DirectorGeneral of the Brazilian National Magistrates School; Zainun Ali, Judge of the Federal Court, Malaysia; Kashim Zannah, Chief Judge, High Court of Borno State, Nigeria; Nihal Jayawickrama, Coordinator of the Judicial Integrity Group; Jose Igreja Matos, Judge, Court of Appeal, Porto, Portugal, President of the European Association of Judges, and Vice President of the International Association of Judges; Lynne Leitch, Justice, Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Representative of the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association, Chair of the Association’s Gender Section; and Diego Garcia-Sayan, UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.

Each of the Advisory Board members was chosen because of their active engagement in advancing judicial integrity. The UNODC will also provide bilateral and regional technical assistance to support judiciaries in the development and implementation of strategies, measures and systems to strengthen integrity and accountability in the justice system.

Justice Saunders, born in 1954 in ST Vincent and the Grenadines, was appointed a Judge of the CCJ in 2005 and, in February 2018, it was announced that he will be the third President of the CCJ. In 1996, he was appointed a judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC). He became a High Court Judge in 1997 and from 1997 to 2001 served as a judge in Montserrat and Anguilla. In 2001, he began serving as a judge in Saint Lucia.

In 2003, Justice Saunders became a Justice of Appeal of the ECSC and in 2004 he became the acting Chief Justice of the ECSC, succeeding Sir Dennis Byron. As Chief Justice, he was the supreme judicial officer of the courts of Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, ST Kitts and Nevis, ST Lucia, and ST Vincent and the Grenadines. Justice Saunders will take up the mantle as CCJ president from Justice Sir Dennis Byron in approximately three months.