Trinidad and Tobago High Court Judge Anthony Carmona has been elected a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Hague.
The elections took place recently at the United Nations in New York.
Carmon, 58, who was nominated for the post by the government of Trinidad and Tobago, was also the CARICOM representative in the elections, which saw judges from 18 countries worldwide, competing for one of the six places on the ICC.
Carmona won the office in the first ballot in the Assembly of State Parties, consisting of 119 countries, with 72 votes.
He placed second to Miariam Defensor Santiago, the first Filipino and Asian from a developing country to serve as ICC judge. She garnered 79 votes. Only 70 were needed.
He and the other five judges will take up office next March. The appointment is for nine years.
Carmona is the second Trinidadian to have been elected to the ICC, the independent body that prosecutes individuals for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The first was former attorney general Karl Hudson-Phillips who was elected in 2003 to serve for nine years but resigned the position in 2007 for personal reasons.
Carmona was an appeals counsel at the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague as well as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha.
In 2004, he was appointed a High Court judge at the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago.
