The University of the West Indies Cave Hill (The UWI Cave Hill) is home to one of the newest and the first Tradelab clinic in the Caribbean! TradeLab is a prestigious network of Universities across the world that use the services of law students to provide free legal advice on trade and investment issues to developing country beneficiaries. For more on the Tradelab community, please click here.

In 2018, the SRC and the Faculty of Law of The UWI Cave Hill teamed up to introduce the first such pilot clinic to the Caribbean. The SRC is home to The University of West Indies’ Flagship program, the Masters in International Trade Policy, and is the leading centre devoted to assisting the Caribbean region with issues of international economic law, regionally and on the global front.

We are pleased to announce that following a successful pilot phase in 2018, the UWI Cave Hill Tradelab clinic has moved to full membership of TradeLab.

The Directors of The UWI Trade Lab are Dr. Jan Yves Remy (SRC Director) and Dr. Ronnie Yearwood, Lecturer in the Faculty of Law of The UWI Cave Hill. Dr. Remy was also recently elected to the Executive Committee of TradeLab.

As we embark on our third year of the clinic, we are accepting calls for help from Caribbean beneficiaries who need assistance with a legal trade and investment issue. Please consult the Call for Projects here  and contact Dr. Jan Yves Remy or Dr. Ronnie Yearwood for further information.

This year’s TradeLab students completed two projects:

• The first project was completed for our client: Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Authority.  The students researched and produced a memorandum entitled  “An Assessment of the Intellectual Property Regime for the Medicinal Cannabis Industry in Barbados”:  The full report is available here:  An Assessment of the Intellectual Property Regime for the Medicinal Cannabis Industry in Barbados.

See also press clippings:The Barbados Medicinal Cannabis Licensing Authority (BMCLA) and the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus Tradelab clinic have formed a partnership.

• The second project was completed for the Caribbean Court of Justice and entailed created a digest of all judgments to date rendered in the Court’s Original Jurisdiction. The Confidential Digest of Cases will be made available on the CCJ website.

For the pilot clinic, the Academic Supervisors, Drs. Remy and Yearwood, signed up 9 students to work in groups of three. The teams worked for beneficiaries from the Caribbean region on the following topics:

1. Analysing reform proposals put forth by World Trade Organization (WTO) Members to enhance the organization’s efficiency and functioning;
2. Formulating WTO compliant domestic support options for local manufacturers; and
3. Identifying policy priorities and strategies for the beneficiary to prepare for plurilateral e-commerce negotiations.
The pilot clinic was assisted by mentors: Claude Chase, Zainab Mchumo, Craig VanGrasstek and Mark Wu. Mentors lend invaluable support to TradeLab clinics with their expertise and guidance to students on the project output.