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, […]
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 […]
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9th August 2016 British High Commission, Kingston, Jamaica
The following is a guest blog from the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays ( JFLAG ) an LGBT rights organisation in Jamaica. 2015 was a watershed moment with the first public LGBT pride celebrations in Jamaica. The theme then was “The Pride of a People: Breaking the Rules of Oppression…” The week of activities […]
22nd July 2016 London, UK
Last week saw the launch of the Forced Marriage Unit’s annual summer campaign. The long summer holiday is a high risk time when families may use the opportunity to take young women and men abroad for a forced marriage. This year the Forced Marriage Unit has produced short audio pieces based on the film launched […]
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9th June 2016 London, UK
As the Foreign Office’s Social Media Manager I spend much of my time distilling the intentionally nuanced and traditionally multilayered world of diplomacy into something engaging and consumable. Case in point: The Foreign Office’s (FCO) annual flagship Human Rights and Democracy Report comprises around 50 pages of expert analysis of the issues the world and […]
19th May 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
I was on Facebook yesterday evening and I saw something that shocked me. It was a post which said that the World Health Organisation only took homosexuality off the list of mental disorders in 1990. I found it hard to believe that anyone over 25 years old has lived in a time when a global […]
22nd March 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
On 15 June 2015, the United Kingdom marked the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta Libertatum, one of the most significant legal documents ever written. “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon […]
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8th March 2016 Skopje, North Macedonia
Today we are marking International Women’s Day. It is usually the day when we are reminded that women are today represented in a multitude of fields: community builders and advisers, soldiers, diplomats, homemakers, doctors, analysts and officials. Different countries have different policies and different gender representation, but there are some issues which are shared topics […]
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4th February 2016 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Earlier this week in Colombo, we gathered together a group of civil society and human rights organisations. For different reasons, Sri Lanka and Maldives are priorities for human rights for the UK. That gives the High Commission access to the Magna Carta Fund, a strategic programme fund dedicated to tackling the root causes of human […]
8th December 2015 Islamabad, Pakistan
More than one third of all Forced Marriage cases reported to the Forced Marriage Unit in London are linked to Pakistan. This is four times more than any other country in the world. Last year, 82 cases of Forced Marriage were reported to my Consular Assistance team in Islamabad only. This year, we have offered […]
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