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Guyanese appointed Appeal Court judge in Belize

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Dr Christopher Arif Bulkan (left) and Governor General of Belize Dame Froyla Tzalam (right) during the virtual swearing-in ceremony on Monday

Dr Christopher Arif Bulkan who acted as Justice of Appeal in the Guyana Court of Appeal was on Monday sworn in as a judge of the Court of Appeal in Belize.

Bulkan was sworn in by Governor General of Belize, Dame Froyla Tzalam who welcomed him and highlighted that she is impressed with the quality of experience he offers to Belize which she sees as an asset to the country’s justice system, a press release from the Government of Belize noted.

Belize’s Attorney General Magali Marin Young was also present at the virtual ceremony and joined in congratulating Justice Bulkan on his appointment. 

“We think it is a plus for Belize that he honours us in joining our bench and I certainly look forward to reading his judgments, which I am sure will enhance our jurisprudence,” the Attorney General is quoted as saying in the release.

Bulkan obtained a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Law from the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Toronto, Canada in May 2008. He also holds a Masters of Law from University College London (1997) and a Bachelors of Law from the University of West Indies (UWI) (1998). 

He is a former lecturer at UWI. He joined the Faculty of Law at the UWI, Cave Hill in Barbados in 2008 before moving to the St Augustine campus in Trinidad in 2012, where he served as Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Law from 2013 to 2016 and then senior lecturer.

Along with Tracy Robinson and Douglas Mendes, S.C, in 2009 he co-founded the UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) which provides pro bono legal services, research and advocacy on human rights issues across various Caribbean territories.

The human rights advocate is the author of ‘The Survival of Indigenous Rights in Guyana’ published by the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Guyana in 2014. 

He is also the co-author of ‘Fundamentals of Caribbean Constitutional Law’ along with Tracy Robinson and Adrian Saunders, published by Sweet and Maxwell in 2015 and is the author of several articles in regional and international journals in the areas of constitutional law and human rights.

Between 2011 and 2015 he served as a director of Transparency Institute of Guyana, an affiliate of Transparency International and in 2017, he was elected to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Committee for a term of four years from 2019 – 2022. 

In 2018, due to a shortage of judges at the Guyana Court of Appeal, then President David Granger had appointed Bulkan to serve as acting Justice of Appeal to deal with the court’s backlog of cases.

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