25th July 2024 Geneva, Switzerland
Among my blessings in life is having an Irish mother-in law and I’m just back from a post-Council trip where my wife did some digging into her family history. A good number of her relatives were refugees fleeing persecution in both Eastern and Central Europe from the late 19th Century. Ireland was where they were […]
5th April 2023 Geneva, Switzerland
I think it’s over. But I’m not entirely sure. Each morning for the last six weeks I’ve been waking up to the grim realisation that the Human Rights Council session was still going and going and going. It went on for so long that I’ve lost track of everything. What day it is, my name, […]
12th October 2022 Geneva, Switzerland
I’ve always had a fond attachment to the number 51. It was my house number growing up in Manchester, as little Robert. My first memory there was my parents bringing my newly-born baby sister home from the hospital. And my mum was born in the year ’51 (as well as some more famous but less […]
8th April 2022 Geneva, Switzerland
On 8 April 2002, I started working at the UK Mission to the UN. I’d had no diplomatic experience. At all. And I’d never been to a UN meeting. I’d only ever been to Geneva once – for my interview, which I started off by spilling water all over the table (I’ve always had a […]
20th January 2021 Geneva, Switzerland
I feel a bit sheepish about not doing a blog at the end of the last session. By the time we’d finished in October it really felt like the less said about the non-stop misery fest that was 2020 the better. I’ll put the fact that not a single person mentioned it down to collective […]
19th March 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
I’ve long had a sense of foredboding about the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council. Those of us who’ve been around these parts longer than most tend to measure our life-spans in the number of Council sessions we’ve racked up, as well as years. I worked out some time ago that session 43 would […]
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7th October 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
Council sessions often drive a temporary wedge between delegates and their families. The heavy hours estrange us from our partners and children and conversations tend to become rushed and reduced to topics of basic functional necessity. So I was slightly thrown when my son wouldn’t let me get out of the door early one morning […]
19th March 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
The implementation of the rule of law, like human rights and fundamental freedoms, is a key means by which the power of the state is constrained. While human rights address the relationship between the state and its people, the rule of law governs the relationship between the branches of the state. Its implementation ensures that […]
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10th July 2018 Geneva, Switzerland
There’s little point writing about anything not related to football at the moment and I wouldn’t expect anyone to give it much attention if I did. By a happy coincidence, plenty of the countries who qualified for the World Cup finals were busy at the Human Rights Council too. I’m happy to report that we […]
18th September 2017 Geneva, Switzerland
The seasons change fast in Switzerland though nothing quite takes the shine off a summer break like a week holed up in UN meetings. Once they begin, life becomes a strange combination of rapid high energy bursts of darting about, mixed with prolonged bouts of repetitive drudgery. Spending hours arguing over the wording of resolutions […]