Janine Coye-Felson
Belize
Expertise:
Law & Policy
Climate Change & Environment
Research Fellow
Day 2: Obligations
Panel:
The Obligations of Governments Arising From the Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change
Saturday, December 3, 2022
As a senior diplomat in the Belize foreign service, Janine Coye-Felson served as legal counsel for Belize and its ambassador to the United Nations. She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her Certificate of Legal Education from the Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica. She is a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin and the Bar Association of Belize.
Coye-Felson started her diplomatic career in 1998 as legal counsel in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She conducted a comprehensive independent research to identify, catalog and advise on Belize’s international treaties obligations, and advised on bilateral treaties relating to trade, transport, labor and cultural exchanges, and on Belize's membership in regional organizations. She also played a key advisory role on the Banana Dispute before the World Trade Organization and on the Belize-Guatemala territorial differendum.
In 2000, Coye-Felson joined the Permanent Mission of Belize to the United Nations in New York as the principal legal expert and in 2007 was appointed an ambassador of Belize. In 2013, she undertook the role of legal advisor to the Office of the President of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly and worked on the development of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In 2015, having resumed her role as ambassador, deputy permanent representative of Belize, Coye-Felson went on to negotiate, on behalf of the Caribbean Community and the Alliance of Small Island States, the finalization of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris agreement. From 2019 to 2020, she assumed two new roles as deputy and chief strategist to the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States and the alternate board member to the Green Climate Fund.
Coye-Felson is conducting research on post-2020 climate finance and progressing a social ocean agenda. She continues to advise on matters relating to climate and oceans.