Richard A. Byron-Cox is a national of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), a small archipelago in the South-eastern Caribbean Sea. He has familial connection to at least five other countries in the region.

Educated in the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America, he is trained in law, diplomacy, and international relations. He is multilingual, an essayist, writer and international law specialist, holding his PhD in Public International Law.

After university, Dr Byron-Cox worked with the Ministry of Legal Affairs of SVG as Chief Advisor on international law. He later joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Chief Advisor to both the Minister and the Prime Minister on matters of foreign policy, and international law and relations.

In 1998 Dr Byron-Cox was invited to join the United Nations Organization (UNO), where he worked for more than two and a half decades. At the UNO he worked on legal matters and later on the issues of sustainable development and the environment. His last office at the UNO was Head of Capacity Development and Innovation at the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). There he was responsible inter alia for spearheading the entire capacity building programme; coordination of the fellowship/mentorship  programme, and design and development of the Secretariat’s programme on innovation.

Dr Byron-Cox has been special guest and/or distinguished lecturer and/or visiting professor at many universities including the Namibia State University, Yonsie University, South Korea, the University of Bonn, Oxford University, University College of London (UCL), the Hacettepe University Ankara, Turkey, the National University of Lesotho, the Kharazmi University in Iran, the Addis Ababa University, the University of Cologne, LUMZA University, Italy,  University of Havana, and the University of Trinidad and Tobago.