Gloria Monique de Mees is a Suriname professor who became OAS's Rapporteur on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and against Racial Discrimination.

[1] She worked at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname lecturing on human rights law.

As part of the process an independent panel led by Claudia Martin of the American University Washington College of Law looked at all of the prospective candidates in a year when there would be four new IACHR members.

Some of those elected met the criteria, but de Mees failed to meet expertise with the IACHR human rights standards and the panel questioned her "independence, impartiality, and absence of conflicts".

The initial President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will be Roberta Clarke who is a commissioner from Trinidad.