The SIDS advantage
A SIDS perspective, to drive global impact
A member-focused vision shaped by the realities of small and vulnerable states.
If elected, Stephen Bereaux would be the first ITU elected official ever to come from a Small Island Developing State: a voice, for the first time, at the Union's senior leadership table for the dozens of SIDS among ITU's 194 Member States who share the same last-mile costs, climate exposure and small-market realities.
Stephen does not seek your support because it is a first. He offers Member States something more substantial: a lens that keeps the Union honest about who it is meant to serve, and disciplined about how it spends what little it has to serve them.
1st
ITU elected official ever to come from a Small Island Developing State, if elected
37
UN-recognised Small Island Developing States among ITU's 194 Member States, all facing the same structural realities
Why it matters
Four ways a SIDS perspective strengthens the whole Union
A perspective earned, not claimed
Sound policy judgment, regulatory credibility and institutions built to adapt to changing national needs are the hallmarks of Stephen Bereaux's two decades of ICT regulatory reform across two Small Island Developing States, The Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago. Six years in ITU senior management, as Chief of Administration and Finance and Deputy to the BDT Director, add a rare, complementary vantage point: the Union's inner workings, paired with its SIDS membership seen from lived experience.
Discipline, because there is no slack in the system
Stephen's two decades as a regulator were spent in small island administrations, where there is no slack anywhere in the system: every good idea cannot be funded or staffed at once. Regulating in exactly that environment, including as CEO of The Bahamas' multi-sector regulator, means honest prioritisation, delivering what was promised with the resources actually on hand, and accounting for it plainly and transparently as daily habits for Stephen, not theory. Those are the habits a Deputy Secretary-General, as the Union's chief operating officer, must bring to ITU's budget, people and delivery.
Proximity: support that arrives before the next storm
Proximity matters: having led ITU's entire regional presence during his tenure as Deputy to the BDT Director, Stephen makes the case for a stronger, more empowered network of regional and area offices, repositioning staff gradually from Geneva through natural attrition and voluntary mobility, so skills sit closer to the members who need them. Council 2026's approval of a new Area Office for the Pacific, a region made up of SIDS spread across a vast ocean much like the Caribbean, reflects exactly this priority.
A test that raises the floor for everyone
SIDS face ITU's mandate at its hardest edge: dispersion across water, capacity with no spare, economic and climate shocks, and the highest connectivity costs in the world. Stephen's ability to develop and implement solutions to work under these conditions, gained during two decades of small-island regulatory and institutional leadership, will benefit everyone, globally. The reverse is not true.
Proximity, in practice: Hurricane Dorian
In 2019, as CEO of URCA, Stephen accompanied ITU's then BDT Director on a visit to Abaco, The Bahamas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian, to witness the devastation first-hand and help coordinate ITU's assistance to restore connectivity. It is the kind of close, timely, on-the-ground support he argues every region deserves, not only when a Director happens to be able to fly out from Geneva.
“I know what it is to sit on the receiving end of this Union's work rather than at the drafting table, to need support that is close, timely and shaped to a country's real situation, and to find it at a distance... That is why I have argued, and will continue to argue, for a stronger regional presence, for skills placed nearer to members.”
The bottom line
If the way this Union works serves a country of four hundred thousand people, spread over an archipelago covering almost seven hundred thousand square kilometres of ocean, then it serves everyone. It does not run the other way.
Rooted in our realities. Committed to our members. Driving impact for all.