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Rob Fenn

Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO

Part of UK in Brunei

27th July 2012 London, UK

My birthday greeting for His Majesty the Sultan

In Brunei, foreign envoys face the unusual challenge of reading out on local radio an appropriate “greeting” for His Majesty The Sultan, whose birthday falls on 15 July – an occasion for banquets, parades and public celebration.

Not Hallmark card territory – I began my recording by re-capping my own sovereign’s friendly greeting to HM the Sultan, in which Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II thanked the Sultan for his presence at our recent Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London.

From my office window, Bandar Seri Begawan is a sea of flags; as London was in June. Here in Brunei our Queen’s Birthday Party reception and a separate Jubilee Street Party had shown how Britons and Bruneians draw patriotic feelings from the same deep well.

Looking more closely from my window, however, central London had not contained quite so many water taxis, zipping back and forth from the Water Village (the “Venice of the East”). On the other hand, one of the small boats in the Thames River Pageant had been flying a huge Bruneian flag.

Thinking of London, I wished Brunei’s delegation – Prince, Minister, officials and athletes – the best of British luck at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. I recalled the imaginative ways my team had found to help Brunei feel part of 2012, including an Olympic Truce event with the Royal Brunei Armed Forces – a salute to Brunei’s peacekeepers. The outpouring of Olympic Spirit, which had accompanied Brunei’s run-up to the games, meant the Sultanate had already struck gold.

I ended on a personal note. One of Brunei’s most beguiling qualities is that it leads you to expect extravaganzas like the Sultan’s birthday celebrations, when they are in fact unique. So I was glad to be sharing this year’s drama with some first time visitors to Brunei: my sister, her husband, and their two little girls.

In our family, we can’t make up our mind whether we like living in Brunei because it is so different from home, or because – below the dazzling differences – it is so familiar. My best attempt to capture this “home from home” feeling (which I know Bruneians also experience in the UK) is this home movie about a charity bazaar. It’s a glimpse of an authentic civil society, Brunei-style. But might it not also have happened in Kent, weather permitting?

About Rob Fenn

Rob Fenn has been Head of the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy Department since March 2014. His last formal responsibility for human rights was in the mid 1990s, when he…

Rob Fenn has been Head of the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy Department
since March 2014. His last formal responsibility for human rights was in
the mid 1990s, when he served as UK Delegate on the Third Committee of
the General Assembly in New York (with annual excursions to what was
then the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva). Recent celebrations of
the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the post of UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights – a resolution he helped pilot through the
GA – came a shock. The intervening 20 years have flown: in Rome
(EU/Economics), in London (Southern European Department), in Nicosia
(Deputy High Commissioner) and latterly in Bandar Seri Begawan.
Rob,
Julia and their two sons loved Brunei, where British High Commissioners
are made especially welcome. The family’s activities included regular
walks in the pristine rainforest, expeditions upriver to help conserve
the Sultanate’s stunning biodiversity, and home movie making (in Brunei
it is almost impossible to take a bad photograph).
After
all those saturated colours, Rob worried that the move back to Britain
might feel like a shift into black and white. But the reunion with
family, friends and colleagues, and the boys’ brave reintegration into a
North London school, have been ample compensation. Julia’s main regret
is that, now she walks on Hampstead Heath, she no longer has an excuse
to carry a machete (“parang”).
Rob’s
problem is summed up in two types of reaction from friends outside the
office. On hearing that he is “in charge of human rights and democracy
at the FCO”, some think it sounds like a vast job: what else is there?
Others think it sounds wishy-washy: not in the national interest. Rob’s
mission is to take the Foreign Secretary’s dictum that “our values are
our interests”, and help his colleagues translate it into action in a
world so varied it can contain both Brunei’s clouded leopard and the
civil war in Syria.

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