26th September 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
I’ve been having a spooky session. For the past fortnight people who left the Council many moons ago have been popping up all over the place as though they never left. Former colleagues do of course come back from time to time but it’s been happening so much recently I’m starting to wonder if I’m […]
19th September 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
I’m afraid I have to begin on a very sad note as our friend and colleague Ebenezer Appreku, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Ghana, passed away just before the session. He was a wonderful man and a strong human rights advocate. I often heard him speak about how critical attention by the UN had helped […]
1st September 2016 Khartoum
Darfur: A green and pleasant land Last month I visited Darfur for the first time. My first impression was how green and beautiful Darfur is. We flew to Nyala via El Geneina in West Darfur and flying over Darfur I was amazed how green the countryside is at this time of year. Driving along the […]
7th December 2015 Khartoum
25th November marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the start of 16 days of activism against gender based violence. Globally one in three women are subject to violence. That represents one billion women worldwide-which is where the global campaign ‘One Billion Rising’, to address violence against women, gets its name. […]
17th November 2015 Khartoum
I come from a country that has been facing internal war for more than half a century. And I am part of a generation branded as “children of conflict”. I try not to forget those times now that I am a Project Officer at the British Embassy Khartoum in charge of delivering “Conflict Prevention Programmes”. Having […]
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5th October 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
Just before the session began, someone told me about Mike the chicken who somehow managed to survive for 18 months despite being headless. There’s been more than a few times over the last year and a half when I’ve known how he felt. The demands of trying to work with a young family and badly […]
28th September 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
However it happens, giving birth to a resolution at the UN is always difficult. In olden times, when the Human Rights Council was but a twinkle in the eye of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the process remained unchanged down the generations. Drafts were put together in foetal form by aspiring parent delegations, and then discussed […]
16th September 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
I hope you had a good break. Those wise enough to spend their holidays in or around these parts will be coming back to the Council re-energised from the unusually long hot summer we’ve had this year. To my family’s bemusement, I opted to spend our holidays caravanning in the slightly more inclement weather which […]
7th September 2015 Khartoum
The first question almost everybody has asked me since I arrived back in Sudan after a gap of over 30 years is ‘has Sudan changed?’ I was last here in the early 1980s teaching English in a Secondary School in the northern town of Ed Damer. There are of course lots of new buildings in […]
20th August 2015
Yesterday was World Humanitarian Day. Geographically and geopolitically Ethiopia lies at the heart of a deeply unstable region, with neighbouring Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Eritrea all engaged in conflicts. Enjoying comparative peace for some time now, it has been hosting refugees since the 1990s. But recent times have seen a dramatic rise in the […]