25th June 2018 Geneva, Switzerland
My Council session got off to an unfortunate and slightly messy start. As I rushed to leave the house I discovered that the cat had regurgitated something unpleasant inside my freshly polished work shoes. I’m not prone to superstition but it felt like a worrying omen for what lay ahead. And so it proved to be. […]
29th March 2018 Geneva, Switzerland
Voting days at the Council have always been stressful, and things don’t seem to be getting any easier with age. The drawback of having been around in these parts for longer than most is that I’m expected to know what I’m doing, especially when it comes to the finer points of the UN’s rules of […]
19th March 2018 Geneva, Switzerland
Since the number of blog followers clamouring for a Council update has now reached single figures (thanks Nuala) I thought I’d better respond. It’s been busy. And cold. But mostly busy. As the 3rd week of the session came to end, UN staff voted to go on strike over impending allowance cuts, which suspended the […]
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 […]
18th October 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Violent extremism is of course nothing new, but today we are confronted by the rapid growth of a particular form of it which is linked by its perpetrators to the tenets of one of the world’s great religions, Islam. It is worth just pausing for a moment to consider that violent extremism is not new, […]
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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 […]
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 […]