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Rob Fenn

Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO

Part of Stay Ahead of the Games UK in Brunei

2nd August 2012 London, UK

Olympic Spirit in the Heart of Borneo

Ask any British diplomat what makes them tick, and the answer often has three parts: something to do with “Queen and Country”, something to do with “making a difference”, and something to do with the intrinsic interest of “getting under the skin of another culture”. My plate, during this Olympic year, has contained large helpings of all three; offset by more physical exercise than you might expect from reading my job description (though perhaps it comes under “Queen and Country”).

My first inkling that promoting the London Games in the 100% humidity of Brunei might prove a sweaty business came just over a year ago, when His Royal Highness Prince Sufri Bolkiah, President of Brunei’s National Olympic Council, invited me to “assist” at the launch of Olympic Day 2011. Brunei’s Royal Family are famously energetic. The event included a brisk hike around the oil town of Kuala Belait.

I was in better shape by Olympic Day 2012 (which involved 45 minutes of 7-a-side football), having “assisted” at several exercise-connected events in the intervening months, including a jog around the capital with athletes from Loughborough College who had brought to Brunei an original 1948 London Olympic Torch. I was caught up in a virtuous circle of British advocacy and authentic local enthusiasm, which fed back into ever more imaginative initiatives by “Team GB”.

I can’t single out one “best idea” among so many – everything from radio quizzes to flag-raising ceremonies (including by Brunei’s wheelchair javelin champion, Awang Sahri Bin Haji Jumat, who is a contender at the Paralympics). On New Year’s Day we gave T-shirts to Brunei’s 2012 firstborns. For our Diamond Jubilee Queen’s Birthday Party we held a “Spirit of the Games” art competition. And we extended the deadline for our Digital Scrapbook competition for Bruneian students in the UK so the films they sent us could reflect the run-up to the Games.

But I can say which event made the biggest impression on my waistline. That would be our Olympic Truce athletics meet – a salute by the UK to the peacekeeping professionalism of the Royal Brunei Armed Forces (RBAF). My home movie below might be subtitled “For Queen and Country”. But Brunei’s brave peacekeepers do it for the world, justifying their nation’s reputation as the “Abode of Peace”.

At our Olympic Truce event I “anchored” (that being the operative term) a High Commission 4 x 100 metre relay squad. To redress the balance, we also fielded a team of Gurkhas. We went up against teams from the RBAF, the Police, the Prisons Department, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, the Brunei National Olympic Council, and even a team containing Brunei’s own Olympians.

That special team included the first female athlete to represent Brunei at an Olympic games, the 400 metre runner Maziah Mahusin, whom I watched carry Brunei’s flag proudly into London’s new Olympic Stadium at the Opening Ceremony. Whatever happens in her heat, she has already “Inspired a Generation”, in Brunei and beyond.

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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