Cheryl H. Stoute, a national of Trinidad and Tobago, was a Staff Member of the United Nations for thirty-eight years, until she retired in 2006. In the last decade of her career, Ms. Stoute served as Chief of Office and Special Assistant of the Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and subsequently as Chief of the Disarmament and Decolonization Affairs Branch in the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management. During this period, Ms. Stoute was also assigned to the posts of Secretary of the United Nations Disarmament Commission, and from 2004 as Secretary of the First Committee (Disarmament and International Security Committee) of the UN General Assembly.

During her career, Ms. Stoute has also served, inter alia, as: Secretary of several international conferences – in Berlin, Beijing, Bangkok, Geneva, Graz, Lima, Nairobi, Paris, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Stockholm, Vienna and Windhoek, as well as at UN Headquarters in New York – on Disarmament, Climate Change, Anti-Personnel Landmines, Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Gender Mainstreaming in UN Peacekeeping Operations and Decolonization. She was the Secretary and Coordinator of the United Nations/People’s Republic of China Joint Conference on “A Disarmament Agenda for the 21st Century,” held in Beijing in 2002.

Ms. Stoute has represented the United Nations at international meetings in Washington, D.C., The Hague, at the “Appeal for Peace” Conference (the largest international peace conference in history – organized by Civil Society); and the “Women’s Empowerment in the Context of Human Security” Workshop, held in Bangkok. She served in Namibia for a year as the Deputy Head of an Electoral Centre and Deputy Director of a Regional Centre, during that country’s independence process in 1989/1990.

Over the years, she has been elected and/or nominated to the United Nations Staff Council, the Appointment and Promotion Committee, the Central Examination Board, the Specialized Board (Political) on External Examinations and the Staff/Management Joint Appeals Board, where she served as a Chairperson. She was selected by the Under-Secretary-General to be the Department for Disarmament Affairs’ Focal Point on Gender Mainstreaming in the United Nations. She initiated and coordinated the UN’s first Gender Mainstreaming Action Plan, which sought to identify ways and opportunities to simultaneously work for disarmament and gender equality. She was also the Department’s Liaison for both the Gender and the Disarmament NGO communities, as well as for its interaction with Civil Society.

Ms. Stoute was the President of the Group on Equal Rights for Women at the United Nations for three terms, the limit. She served as Senior Adviser to subsequent Presidents and hosted, at the annual conferences on International Women’s Day, dignitaries such as US First Ladies Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, President Mary Robinson of Ireland and Ms. Bella Abzug, with whom she co-chaired one of the Conferences.

Following her retirement, Ms. Stoute returned to the United Nations and served for several years as Secretary of the Joint Appeals Board. She also served as a Member of the Board of Trustees and, subsequently, as Chairperson of the Board, of the Urban Resource Institute, a New York-based, multi-million dollar non-profit Organization dealing with battered women. She currently sits on several Boards in Trinidad and Tobago.

Ms. Stoute holds a BA and MA (Honors) in Economics.