Andrea Marie Dawes, J.D., B.B.A. joined the Staff of the Anti-dumping and Subsidies Commission, a Portfolio Agency of the Ministry of Industry, Investment and Commerce (the “Commission”) as its Executive Director in September 2002. The Commission administers Jamaica’s laws on antidumping, subsidies countervail and safeguards.
Andrea Marie Dawes nee Brown is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Centre, Washington D.C., USA., 1989 and Howard University School of Business, Washington, D.C., USA., 1986. She was admitted to the Bars of the State of Maryland (1989) and Washington, D.C. (1990), USA and practised law there for thirteen years, focussing on litigation and business transactions, counselling corporate clients and assisting them in establishment, evaluating risk and potential profitability for new and developing business opportunities. She served clients in the United States, Guyana and Jamaica. She remained in good standing at the bar, after returning home to Jamaica to live in 2001. Mrs. Dawes received her Legal Education Certificate at Norman Manley Law School, Mona, Jamaica in May 2003.
In 2007, Mrs. Dawes was appointed by then World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General, Pascal Lamy to her first Dispute Settlement Panel and was loaned as agreed by the Jamaican Government as a signor under the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). She has served on several Panels since then to help resolve disputes arising between trading partners such as the European Union, the United States, Russia, Ukraine China, and Canada. She is named in the WOMEN AND THE WTO, GENDER STATISTICS publication for (1995-2016) as Ms Andrea Marie Brown of Jamaica, having served by then on five (5) Dispute Settlement Panels, DS482, DS440, DS425, DS379, and DS350. She is one of only three Caribbean women to have participated on WTO dispute settlement panels. In 2018, Andrea also became the first woman, Caribbean National, and one of a few women to have chaired a WTO Dispute Settlement Panel. She is currently wrapping up her second stint in the Chair, serving pursuant to her seventh appointment, on the Arbitrator of a hotly contested, long-running “textbook” case at the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). She has also been named on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Panel of Experts.
Andrea completed specialised training in Trade Remedies and Trade Policy, including such courses as: WTO Dispute Settlement Procedures and Practices, Regional Seminar, Bridgetown, Barbados, 2003; WTO Regional Workshop on Antidumping for Selected Caribbean Countries, Bridgetown, Barbados, 2004; Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government Executive Programs, The Practice of Trade Policy, 2004; The WTO and Trade Policy Practice, Korea University, Seoul, Korea, 2006; and WTO Seminars for Heads of Anti-dumping Authorities from 2003 through 2010. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of the West Indies in courses related to the World Trading System at the Mona School of Business and at the Department of Government, Mona Campus.
Andrea jokes that she had to return home to Jamaica to live because, unknown to her, her husband was here. In 2012, she married, happily, former Gleaner journalist, best known for the Gleaner’s seminal Religion section, Mind and Spirit; now Pastor and Bible teacher, Rev. Mark L. Dawes, who is also the Chairman of the Media Commission of the Missionary Church Association in Jamaica.
