13th March 2017 Geneva, Switzerland
While there haven’t exactly been howls of protest about my online silence these last few weeks, the number of people asking what I’ve been up to rose to three on Friday (excluding my last boss who is clearly still keeping tabs on me from afar), so I feel a little sheepish and neglectful. The main reason […]
13th December 2016 Vienna, Austria
As an Ambassador constantly meeting people of all nationalities interested in the impact of the 23 June vote by the UK to leave the European Union, I am an avid follower of statistics. So for ease of reference, I’ve put together a few of those which have caught my eye. Vienna Globenmuseum The fact Britain […]
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9th December 2016 Holy See
On 10 December, the UN will commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The focus this year is “standing up for the rights of others”: a call to uphold human rights in our global community, where each of us can make a difference. The Foreign Office in London and all British Embassies […]
5th October 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
The physical experience of going through a Council session feels rather like having your head banged against a wall. It’s nice when it stops, but otherwise not particularly enjoyable. So there was a sense of delirium in the air when we headed out of the doors at a reasonable time last Friday evening. Three weeks […]
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 […]
4th July 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Late on Friday evening The Council came to a sweaty and cantankerous finish. Well, it sort of did. Not content with causing disruption and delay through 50 hostile amendments to a range of important resolutions, Russia then forced the Council into extra time by persistently objecting during the appointment of the Special Rapporteurs. Time eventually […]
27th June 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Civil service convention dictates that I should avoid expressing a public view on important domestic matters, so I’ll leave all talk of last week’s referendum to others. I’m free to discuss the weather though and after endless weeks of rain, this week’s dramatic rise in temperature caught many of us by surprise. As someone who […]
20th June 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
In the months since the last Council session, Star Wars has come to dominate my home life. My son asks endless questions about the characters, while the rest of the family begrudgingly take turns to act them out. I’m most often cast as Jabba the Hutt while my Jedi son brandishes his light sabre and […]
30th March 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
The Council closed last Thursday after a health sapping, sleep deprived and occasionally fractious month, but the results were good. Following weeks of pressure from all regions, South Sudan accepted that its human rights record should be kept under close scrutiny by the Council and committed to cooperating wtih a strong new Commission of investigators […]
21st March 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Sorry for last week’s silence. A bout of family flu and some absent colleagues kept me busier than usual but thankfully everyone’s fine again. The middle two weeks of the Council session have been typically frantic with everyone trying to work out the version of their resolutions to table which they hope will attract the […]