Matt Cherry has been a dedicated contributor to organized Humanism for many years. Having worked at the British Humanist Association he then spent 1993-95 at IHEU head office when it was based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Later he would move to the United States working for Council for Secular Humanism and then the Institute for Humanist Studies.
He returned to IHEU from 2008, as our International Representative for North America and the head of our UN delegation in New York.
Matt Cherry
In New York he was elected chair of the United Nations NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief for three consecutive terms, the first non-religious person to hold that post. Matt was also the lead author of the inaugural IHEU Freedom of Thought Report and has been working hard on the 2013 edition this year.
President of IHEU, Sonja Eggerickx, said, “Matt has always been a loyal colleague and an incisive thinker and doer. His absence will be felt among his Humanist colleagues for many years — although I hope we still see him from time to time!
“Human rights, human dignity and ethics are important for IHEU, as they are for Matt personally, and I am very pleased that in his new role as Executive Director at Death Penalty Focus his commitment to these principles will continue into the future.”