20th July 2019 Stockholm, Sweden
One of the many things that the UK and Ukraine have in common is a keen interest in quality education. We are both countries that like to study (and play!) hard. The UK remains a destination of choice for Ukrainian students, who often leave my country as star graduates. International students come to the UK […]
Read more on British Council impact (and new offices) in Ukraine | Reply
6th September 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Every year the Human Rights Council organises a retreat. Making the Council more effective is a favourite topic, and was so again last week in Evian. Many argue that the Human Rights Council is a victim of its own success. Never have its sessions had more resolutions, panels and side events. The Director General of […]
Read more on We Need More Naming And Praising In The Human Rights Council | Reply
7th July 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
UN diplomats spend much of their lives fretting about securing exactly the right words in international documents. I’ve seen a whole day of negotiations conclude with only a comma added, to mutual back-slapping and a general sense of a job well done, and have spent weeks painfully debating the insertion of a footnote or an […]
22nd June 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
The more time I spend at the Council, the more things seem to be getting out of control at home. The kids cope well enough, but our cat Pixie has spent the week continuing her recent hunting spree in a blatant show of attention-seeking. This week I’ve had to dispose of a shrew, two field […]
14th June 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
It feels like we’ve hardly been away. I’m starting to suspect that someone has airbrushed April and May from the global calendar. The only clue that the months have been and gone is our hedge growing high enough to receive a letter from the estate agent ordering us to cut it by 10 centimetres and […]
15th December 2014
The UK’s fourteen Overseas Territories add a particular dimension to British foreign policy and our world view. I often write in these pages about the global Holy See network. The United Kingdom has long had, and still retains, a global role, of which our fourteen Overseas Territories are both one result and an ongoing manifestation. […]
Read more on Britain’s global horizons: international partners and penguins | Reply
25th March 2013 Geneva, Switzerland
The session is over, the resolutions are all adopted and UN blue smoke has finally risen through the holes in the Council ceiling. After weeks of lock down without food, daylight or other things that make us happy, the Council delegates can start to think about a return to normality. But for those afflicted by […]
3rd October 2011 Geneva, Switzerland
As the September session of the Human Rights Council drew to a close on Friday, there were some glum faces around, especially amongst the NGOs. The NGOs provide a much needed reality check to the rest of us and I think it’s a fair criticism that civil servants are often all too ready to point […]
Read more on Cheap Seats, Backsliding and Cuban Democracy | Reply
26th September 2011 Geneva, Switzerland
The second week of the September Human Rights Council session was a typically frantic affair, as delegations scrambled to finalise the resolutions that they would present before Thursday’s deadline. Getting resolutions in tends to be a quite scrappy business, more like a school sports day three-legged race than a gracious Olympic sprint. Countries have quite […]
Read more on False starts, prizes and little bits of history | Reply
23rd September 2011
A guest blog by Martin Dowle, Director, British Council The west Ukrainian city of Lviv is an intriguing location for a literature festival. Breath-taking views of spires and domes, offset with hidden courtyards, make this city on the cusp between East and West a crossroads for cultural exchange. Some 300 events are packed into four […]