The Best Laid Plans

The more time I spend at the Council, the more things seem to be getting out of control at home. The kids cope well enough, but our cat Pixie has spent the week continuing her recent hunting spree in a blatant show of attention-seeking. This week I’ve had to dispose of a shrew, two field mice and resuscitate a sparrow. I knew my first aid training would come in handy one day. It’s made for some awkward conversations with neighbours when the cat runs through their garden with her latest catch in her mouth while they sunbathe or I when I bump into them at the communal bins carrying carcass-filled bags. Her victims are becoming bigger every time and I’m troubled in the night by visions of her trying to drag one of the local cows through the cat-flap.

For all the recent talk of improving the Council’s efficiency, reducing duplication and trying to bring down our ever burgeoning workload, week one of the June session did not get off to the most auspicious start. Monday’s special debate on migration was certainly worth doing – human rights mechanisms need to be better heard in discussions on how to respond to the various migration crises around the globe. But it seemed excessive to have two separate debates on migration running back to back on the Council’s opening day. It meant many states made the same points twice, with the Council running until 9 o’ clock in the evening, and it would have made more sense to have just one discussion. By the middle of the week the microphones had ceased to function, leaving many of us wondering whether this was a mechanical metaphor urging the Council towards a little more action and a little less talk. It prompted a long delay in proceedings, a change of location, and another 9 o’ clock finish to make up for lost time.

Outside of the Council plenary most delegates began negotiations on the resolutions they are proposing this session. My own colleagues are leading resolutions on Syria where the Council’s Commission of Inquiry continues to document horrific violations on an unimaginable scale, and on South Sudan where new allegations of serious violations keep emerging. In both countries accountability is fundamental if abuses are to cease and if there is to be lasting peace. The week also saw Ukraine put forward a commendable initiative to begin regular discussion of its own human rights situation. Ukraine has been cooperating well with a UN Monitoring Mission in the country for over a year to help address the huge challenges it has been facing. In a welcome move, Ukraine is now seeking assistance from states by opening up the UN’s reports for public discussion.

On a much more negative note, a group of states put forward a second resolution on ‘the protection of the family’. As with last year’s resolution, there are many difficulties with the proposed draft, especially the fact that it prioritises the family as an institution needing protection over the rights of individuals within the family. The resolution entirely fails to acknowledge that individuals may face serious violence, abuse and discrimination within the family, some forms of which are protected by laws which grant immunity for marital rape or which restrict women’s rights to property or inheritance. The resolution also rows back on many years of agreed UN wording that recognises that different forms of the family can exists such as single parent families, extended families, child-headed households or same sex couples. The resolution might be more clearly titled ‘the protection of one form of the family, (but not the ones we don’t like).’

Towards the end of the week, Sengalese hip hop singer Sister Fa brought some much needed energy to proceedings, performing for delegates in the Council coffee bar. Sister Fa is hugely inspiring and I’d heard about her last year when she went to the Girls Summit in the UK. As someone who went through female genital mutilation as a young girl, she is using her personal experience and power as a musician to break taboos and to speak out for change. She also had a great sense of humour, telling some of the uncomfortable looking delegates who weren’t joining in her song that even Germans could sing better.

Week 2 promises to be frantic as delegates rush to finalise the resolutions that they will present before Thursday lunchtime’s deadline for tabling. I hope your week goes well. But if you live near me, please keep your animals in at night, however big they are.