Week One in Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO, London

Start as you mean to go on, they say. Not easy, given the climactic nature of my first full week in charge of the FCO’s Human Rights and Democracy Department. Truth be told, this was the climax of my predecessor’s tenure – plans laid by her and my new colleagues, months ago, coming to fruition shortly after I scrambled into the driving seat.

The theme of this first blog from my new job (a very different vantage point from Brunei) is the way the UK’s diplomatic network promotes human rights. Last week’s main achievements were both secured by the collective effort of widely distributed teams.

In Geneva, a series of important resolutions were adopted by the Human Rights Council, including on Sri Lanka. The UN High Commissioner will lead a new drive for peace and reconciliation through an international investigation to establish the truth.

In London, despite my Department’s responsibility for supporting our team in Geneva at this busiest time in the UN human rights calendar, we also managed to stage a successful conference for, well, just about every UK human rights diplomat who wasn’t in Geneva.

There were moments when I worried we had too many plates spinning. In retrospect, however, I can see that the metaphor of a juggler, alone under the spotlight, doesn’t fit the bill at all. The campaigns that delivered each of those resolutions in Geneva, and every aspect of our human rights conference in London, were prime examples of the teamwork which goes into human rights diplomacy.

In the case of the Sri Lanka resolution, the UK’s “team effort” was led by the Prime Minister himself, whose visit last year to Colombo and parts of the country still affected by what happened at the end of the civil war confirmed his view that there should be an international investigation. The successful outcome is a tribute to the core drafting group (US, UK, Mauritius, Montenegro and Macedonia), to all co-sponsors of the resolution, to all the countries who voted for it or were persuaded not to block it, to the UN High Commissioner whose report justified it, and to the expert NGOs and many victims whose testimony inspired it.

In the case of our “network conference” in London, the clue is in the title. It was an assembly of talent which, on the 363 other days of the year, is distributed amongst our Embassies and High Commissions around the world. They had come together for two days to brainstorm how the FCO can do better human rights diplomacy. We had plenary meetings addressed by FCO senior management (including Minister Mark Simmonds and Permanent Secretary Simon Fraser), and eminent speakers from the human rights scene at home and abroad. And we had 9 working groups, during which the FCO’s human rights practitioners exchanged inspiring stories and cautionary tales – challenging and learning from each other.

As intended, these experiences have set me thinking about the role of my new department – how can we add most value when so much of the UK’s impact on human rights is, and should be, exercised through geographical departments, bilateral posts and multilateral expertise? The answer, I think, is connected with a buzzword I picked up at our conference: curatorship.

I will use these blogs to “curate” examples of UK excellence at human rights diplomacy. These are widely scattered about the globe, and across the spectrum of the FCO’s thematic human rights priorities. Curatorship means “taking care of” and generating a virtuous circle of achievements –  shared, understood and replicated.

I can foresee some of these exhibits already: first up, the Foreign Secretary’s launch of our Annual Human Rights Report on 10 April; and plenary sessions of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which the UK chairs this year. Other exhibits I can’t foresee, because they are currently only a gleam in the eye of colleagues who left our network conference rededicated to the cause of human rights in the country and region to which they are posted.

If – dear reader – you are one of those colleagues, or a civil society contact of theirs, or anyone else working to safeguard human rights, and you know of a way the UK’s diplomatic network has made a positive difference, please let me know.