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Rob Fenn

Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO

Part of UK in Brunei

25th February 2013 London, UK

“Ignite Your Future!”

Before choosing that slogan for the latest Education UK Exhibition here in Brunei, and the dramatic logo which went with it, we discussed what it meant. Some of us thought it sounded too incendiary. Then some bright spark recalled that the I-Centre had pioneered use of the word “ignite” for their excellent “Business Plan” competition.

We needn’t have worried. When I visited the exhibition – at the Empire Grand Hall and at Maktab Duli – ignition was clearly the name of the game.

Conversations were catching fire all round me, between would-be students and British universities and colleges, parents, returned graduates, experts from the Ministry of Education, the media and members of the general public there to enjoy the show.

The sparkling atmosphere comes across well in this piece by The Brunei Times:

A warm glow was with me from the “BUBA Awards” which I’d helped present the night before.

The British Universities Brunei Association dished out prizes for essays on “The Knowledge Economy” – an excellent way to kindle passion for research in Brunei’s student body. What I found most heart-warming, however, was the common cause we’d identified between BUBA and their partners in the Department of Schools; and the leaders of individual Sixth Form colleges in Brunei. The Sultanate is blessed with remarkable teachers.

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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Education Education Exhibition Education UK Exhibition The Brunei Times

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