Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos (born 13 March 1954) is a Guyanese-British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.
When she was appointed Secretary of State for International Development on 12 May 2003, following the resignation of Clare Short, Amos became the first Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) woman to serve as a Cabinet minister. She left the Cabinet when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. In July 2010, Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon announced Baroness Amos's appointment to the role of Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. She took up the position on 1 September 2010 and remained in post until 29 May 2015. In September 2015, Amos was appointed Director of SOAS, University of London, becoming the first black woman to lead a university in the United Kingdom.
Since September 2020, Amos has been Master of University College, Oxford, succeeding Sir Ivor Crewe and becoming the first-ever black head of an Oxford college, as well as the first woman to head that college.
Amos was born in 1954 in British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America and, after moving with her family to the UK in 1963, she attended Bexley Technical High School for Girls (now Townley Grammar School), Bexleyheath, where she was the first black deputy head girl. She completed a degree in Sociology at the University of Warwick (1973–76), an MA in cultural studies at the University of Birmingham (where the department was led by Stuart Hall), and studied education at the University of East Anglia.
After working in Equal Opportunities, Training and Management Services in local government in the London boroughs of Lambeth, Camden and Hackney, Amos became Chief Executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission in 1989, leaving the position in 1994.
In 1995, Amos co-founded the consultancy firm Amos Fraser Bernard and was an adviser to the South African government on public service reform, human rights and employment equity.
Amos has also been deputy chair of the Runnymede Trust (1990–1998); a trustee of the Institute for Public Policy Research; a non-executive director of the University College London Hospitals Trust; a trustee of Voluntary Service Overseas; chair of the Afiya Trust; a director of Hampstead Theatre; chair of the Board of Governors of the Royal College of Nursing Institute; and a trustee, now patron, of the Serious Trust. In March 2026, she was announced by Tomorrow's Warriors – a music education and artist development charity founded in 1991 – as one of the organisation's inaugural patrons.
Amos was elevated to the peerage in August 1997 as Baroness Amos, of Brondesbury in the London Borough of Brent. In the House of Lords, she was a co-opted member of the Select Committee on European Communities Sub-Committee F (Social Affairs, Education and Home Affairs) from 1997 to 1998. From 1998 to 2001, she was a Government Whip in the House of Lords and also a spokesperson on Social Security, International Development and Women's Issues as well as one of the Government's spokespersons in the House of Lords on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Baroness Amos was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs on 11 June 2001, with responsibility for Africa; Commonwealth; Caribbean; Overseas Territories; Consular Issues and FCO Personnel. She was replaced by Chris Mullin.
International Development Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords
After previously threatening to resign as International Development Secretary in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Clare Short eventually stood down in May 2003 over a draft UN resolution that she felt failed to give "the UN its promised central role in rebuilding Iraq". Baroness Amos, who had been serving as Foreign Office minister and as a spokesperson in the Lords for International Development was swiftly announced as Short's replacement. Her appointment made her "the UK's first black woman cabinet minister" and was an unusual example of a government department being headed by a member of the House of Lords.
Baroness Amos was appointed Leader of the House of Lords on 6 October 2003, following the death of Lord Williams of Mostyn, which meant that her tenure as Secretary of State for International Development lasted less than six months.
On 17 February 2005, the British Government nominated Lady Amos to head the United Nations Development Programme, but the position was assigned to Kemal Derviş.
Baroness Amos left the cabinet when Gordon Brown took over as prime minister from Tony Blair in June 2007. Brown proposed her as the European Union special representative to the African Union. However, Belgian career diplomat Koen Vervaeke was appointed to this role instead. She was a member of the Committee on Commonwealth Membership, which presented its report on potential changes in membership criteria for the Commonwealth of Nations at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2007 in Kampala, Uganda. She was a member of the board of the Sierra Leone Titanium Resources Group.
On 8 October 2008, it was reported that Amos was to join the Football Association's management board for England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. This was described as a "surprise appointment", since she has no recorded interest in football (despite her interest in cricket) or any experience in similar work such as the 2012 Olympics bid.
In August 2025, Amos was appointed leader of the independent investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal care. The report of the enquiry was published on 30 June 2026. Prior to the report's publication, Dr. Bill Kirkup (known for, among other things, chairing the Morecambe Bay Maternity Enquiry) resigned as he felt he could not support a report that denied that “normal birth” ideology had an impact on care. Other criticism of the investigation report included adverse comment from Michelle Welsh, the government maternity advisor, who said she was "shocked and profoundly disappointed by the report" and from James Titcombe.
British High Commissioner to Australia
On 4 July 2009, it was announced that Baroness Amos had been appointed British High Commissioner to Australia in succession to Helen Liddell (now Baroness Liddell). Amos took up her position in October 2009, and was succeeded by Paul Madden, who took up the appointment during January 2011.
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator