31st January 2017 Geneva, Switzerland
At the end of May the nations of the world will meet in Geneva to elect the next Director General of the World Health Organisation. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of millions rests on the decision. That is why the United Kingdom is supporting the candidacy of Dr David Nabarro. The […]
12th December 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Until now, my enduring memory of the Falklands War was of a car park in Washington DC. My father was serving in our Embassy there at the time. Later it was claimed that the US simply handed key military components over to us in the Embassy’s car park, so urgent was the cause, so deep […]
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23rd November 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
To appreciate the paradox of globalisation, consider this: – The first of the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals was to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income was less than $1.25 a day. This target was met five years early. Over half those lifted out of extreme poverty during this period, […]
7th November 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
So what do the elections to the UN’s Human Rights Council tell us about the state of human rights in the world today? The elections took place ten days ago. There are 47 members of the HRC, and each has a three year term. A third of the membership is elected each year. All the […]
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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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 […]
3rd October 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
What will be different after this Human Rights Council? Does any of it matter? Isn’t it just diplomats fighting over words? These are questions I sometimes get asked. I can understand the despair at the sight of capable female Russian diplomats gutting a resolution upholding women’s reproductive rights, something we saw at this last session. […]
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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 […]
11th July 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
As Britain’s ambassador in Geneva I have often been asked in recent days about developments in the UK. There has been much uncertainty and some anxiety. I have sought to explain, but also to reassure. On 23 June the British people voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. It is clear that some […]
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