Henry Leonard Mac Donald of Suriname Chair of Third Committee
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| Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York |
Biographical Note
Henry Leonard Mac Donald of Suriname Chair of Third Committee
Henry Leonard Mac Donald, the Permanent Representative of Suriname to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on 4 September. (See Press Release GA/SHC/4034)
Mr. Mac Donald has served as Permanent Representative since August 2007. Prior to that, for six years, he served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at Suriname’s Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C., as well as Alternate Representative to the Organization of American States (OAS). In 2000, he served as Chargé d’ Affairs ad Interim at the Embassy in Washington and as his country’s Interim Representative to OAS. From 2004, he was also the Coordinator of Suriname to the Summit of the Americas Implementation Process.
A legal scholar and academic with more than a decade of Government service, Mr. Mac Donald served as the Coordinator of the Unit for International Affairs and Human Rights in Suriname’s Ministry of Justice and Police from 1989 to 1998. He followed that with a three-year stint in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Deputy Chief of Mission at Suriname’s Permanent Mission to OAS.
Mr. Mac Donald has received numerous academic honours, including a human rights and environmental law fellowship at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (1998), and a UN-UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) fellowship at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands (1994).
He has also represented his Government at a host of international and regional conferences since 1994, including as principal representative in meetings of the Summit of the Implementation Review Group (2005) and senior delegate to the Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina that same year. In 2002, he was the senior legal consultant for the Surinamese delegation to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Mr. Mac Donald, who speaks three languages, received a Master of Laws in law and government from the American University in Washington, D.C., in 2004. He also received a legal master’s degree from Anton de Kon University of Suriname in 1994. His foundation course certificate is also from Anton de Kon University (1986-1988).
Born on 3 August 1963 in North-West Nickerie, Suriname, Mr. Mac Donald is married with five children.
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* This supersedes Press Release BIO/3907 of 16 August 2007.
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