PORT OF SPAIN: 16TH JUNE, 2017
Trinidad and Tobago national, Dr. Wanda-Lee De Landro Clarke, was elected as a member of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (‘the Commission’, ‘CLCS’) on June 14, 2017. Dr. De Landro Clarke is a Senior Petroleum Geophysicist at the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries. She is the first woman to be elected to sit on the twenty-one member Commission.
Dr. De Landro Clarke obtained 160 votes out of a possible 164 votes of States Parties present and voting, from all regions of the world. In order to be elected, a candidate had to obtain at least two-thirds majority of the ballots cast. The elections took place at United Nations Headquarters in New York, within the framework of the 27th Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The CLCS was established pursuant to Article I of Annex II of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to facilitate the implementation of the Convention with regard to the establishment of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.
The successful election of Dr. De Landro Clarke is consistent with the continuation of Trinidad and Tobago’s leading role on matters pertaining to the law of the sea. Dr. De Landro Clarke will be succeeding Trinidad and Tobago national, Mr. Francis Charles, who has served on the Commission since 2007.
Dr. De Landro Clarke’s election to the CLCS also satisfies the Government of Trinidad and Tobago’s adherence to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, to ‘achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls'.
The meeting also elected twenty other members from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and Western Europe.
Ministry of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs
Click to view official media release - Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf
