1st October 2012 Geneva, Switzerland
Human Rights Council sessions rarely end up being either a resounding success or an unmitigated disaster. They rather tend to be a mixed bag with some good things, some bad and a few which leave you scratching your head, wondering what it meant and why it happened in the first place. The September session was […]
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27th September 2012
On 25 September, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague co-hosted an event at the UN General Assembly alongside Zainab Bangura, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. He spoke about his Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), launched in London last May. The PSVI aims to strengthen international efforts and co-ordination to prevent and […]
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24th September 2012 Geneva, Switzerland
My second week of the Council session got off to a particularly bad start as I managed to put my back out while playing with my son at the weekend. My boss Ian cheerfully put it down to age catching up with me. I like to think I’ve a few good years left in me […]
17th September 2012 Geneva, Switzerland
I hope you had a good rest over the summer. Judging by the hectic pace of the first week of the September Human Rights Council, you’re going to need it. Unfortunately my own plans for a final restorative weekend before the Council began didn’t quite work out. Anyone who’s lived here for a while will […]
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13th September 2012
The UN International Day of Democracy falls on 15 September, a day on which Governments are encouraged to strengthen national programmes devoted to the promotion and consolidation of democracy. The theme this year is Democracy Education. As the relevant UN web-page notes: “It is only with educated citizens that a sustainable culture of democracy can […]
11th September 2012 London, UK
I read somewhere that Brunei Darussalam was the most “Facebooked” country in the world, on a per capita basis. Whether or not that’s true, Brunei’s extraordinary levels of literacy (94.9%, among the highest in the world), and online of freedom of expression, combine to make “virtual Brunei” a dynamic and fascinating place. With a population […]
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30th July 2012
All British ambassadors work with human rights defenders. As the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has said: “Human rights are part of our national DNA and will be woven into the decision making processes of our foreign policy”. I have written previously about our work with people and organisations trying to prevent the trade in human […]
19th July 2012 Geneva, Switzerland
It was a strange June Council session. By starting much later this year, it felt like school had been punishingly extended for 3 extra weeks, just as the bell should have been granting us our summer freedom. Everyone did their best to wear their polite, professional faces. But the truth was, we all wanted to […]
5th July 2012 Geneva, Switzerland
Anyone who’s lived around Geneva for a while will know that the weather here plays nasty tricks. In winter the sun shines down serenely on fresh snow all week, only to turn into a vicious arctic ice-blast by the weekend. And in summer the downpours coincide with Friday afternoon work-leaving times just a little too […]
11th June 2012
In his 2011 message for World Peace Day, Pope Benedict emphasised the role of the family as “the school of freedom of peace”, the bedrock of our social fabric. His Holiness added that the family founded on marriage was “the expression of the close union and complementarity between a man and a woman”. The practice […]