The CENDEP blog is taking a short seasonal break. We will be back at the beginning of January. We thank all our readers for their interest and loyalty over the past year, and wish you all a peaceful 2018.
This post is a little more light-hearted than usual. I wrote this story a few years ago based (very loosely) on a true event.
Secretly, Kabir had been excited about going to
the Regional Workshop on Training of Trainers for Sustainable Human Rights
Protection. To his colleagues in the National Human Rights Commission he
treated it as a necessary burden – an additional strip on his multi-coloured
wall calendar. With Maryam in admin, who booked his flights, he was blasé and
bored. International travel? Tiring and tiresome.
But Kabir liked it all. Well, perhaps not all. He
could have done without the insolent pat-down from the security police at the
airport. And, in truth, also the crowded, smelly first leg of his journey in
the ex-Soviet turbo-prop. But once he intersected with one of the great
international airlines, he relished it: the duty-free shops, the individual
video screens, and the foil-and-plastic wrapped airline meals. What he liked
most was this: the universal apparatus of the conference, workshop and seminar.
He loved the conference pack in its newly logoed canvas rucksack. He loved the
name tags and the buffet lunches and the pin boards smothered in conference
photographs. He loved going to break-out rooms and he loved collecting his per
diem. He loved the words for themselves. Per diem: it could only mean you were
at a workshop. But he was not averse to the hard currency either. He could save
it and take it home for Ali’s school fund.
The workshop was being held in a large and
luxurious hotel. Palatial was the word that came to Kabir’s mind. It was
monumental and impersonal, with a large atrium and corridors leading off to
many meeting and function rooms. Kabir presented himself at the registration
desk early, a good twenty minutes before the designated starting hour. Of
course, it would start late – they always did. But the anticipation was part of
the pleasure. He could riffle through his registration pack, study the agenda,
read about the city tours and cultural evenings that had been arranged for his
pleasure.
No one else appeared to have arrived. A friendly
young woman asked him to fill in his name and contact details on a form.
“This is for the participants’ list,” she said.
“We’ll circulate it in the course of the workshop and you’ll have a chance to
make any corrections.” Yes, the participants’ list. He kept these from every
workshop. He copied them for Mohammad to put into the mailing database, while
he himself carefully entered each new address into his email programme.
With an acrid-smelling marker pen, the young
woman wrote his name on a piece of card, which she slipped inside a plastic
sleeve with a clip on the back. She handed it to Kabir, who fumbled to attach
it to the lapel of his jacket.
“I’m Maria,” she said. “If you need any help with
anything, just contact me or anyone in the secretariat.”
Maria gave him an expensive-looking leather
shoulder bag.
“All your conference materials are in there,” she
said. “You are rather late – perhaps you’d best just slip in and sit at the
back.”
Kabir was mortified. He sneaked a glance at his watch.
No, it was their fault; they had surely sent him the wrong starting time on the
provisional agenda.
Maria must have read his expression. “It’s
alright, Mr Abbas,” she said with a smile. “I expect you’re tired from your
trip.”
She lowered her voice and cast up her eyes. “And
it’s just the report from the steering committee this morning.”
It was only after he had found a seat near the
back of the hall, whispering his apologies, that he realized that he had not
received the report of the steering committee. No report and an inaccurate
agenda. That was something he would have to note on his evaluation form. Oh,
but perhaps it was Maria who had put together the pre-workshop mailings. And
she had been so helpful.
For a few moments Kabir pondered the ethics of
failing to register his criticism of the secretariat. No, he concluded, there
would be much else to write in his evaluation. For now he should concentrate on
proceedings.
It was always difficult to concentrate when you
came in late (another reason why Kabir never did). And the fumes from that
marker pen did not help. He still felt slightly dizzy.
The speaker was a well-groomed grey-haired man in
a suit, who was speaking in a flat monotone. When Kabir first started doing
human rights work you would never come across anyone in a suit. But now all the
men in suits knew the human rights language and all the human rights people
dressed in suits so that the men in suits would take them seriously. It could
be confusing.
The grey-haired man was talking about
“outcomes-based methodologies”. He almost became animated about the exciting
possibilities of integrating these into “the planning-implementation-evaluation
continuum”.
Behind the speaker was a large blue and white
banner with the letters AFROPEC on it. Below the acronym was a longer string of
words that Kabir could not read from the back of the hall. At one side a dove
swooped elegantly down towards the large C. At least, he assumed it was a dove,
but it was not very well drawn and had a slightly sneering expression and a
generally aggressive mien.
Kabir wracked his brain. What did AFROPEC stand
for? He knew that the workshop was under the auspices of the UNOHCHR, but this
must be the local partner. No, hold on. The AFRO in the title must mean that it
was the regional coordinating body. It all used to be so simple. There was AI.
That was easy to remember. And the ICJ had been around for a long time. Then
along came HRW. And now there was a whole alphabet soup: ISHR, ICTR, ICHRP…
Even UNOHCHR was a mouthful. Woe betide if you got them confused with UNHCR.
Some tried to avoid the whole thing by adopting some snappy injunction or
worthy abstraction as their name: Liberty, Justice, Human Rights First. Human
Rights Whenever, Kabir thought.
Kabir was a diligent student. He prepared
carefully for his human rights workshops, reading all the material he was sent
and more besides. He affected a casual air, but he knew he was privileged to
attend and he owed it to his colleagues at the National Human Rights Commission
not to waste the opportunity. Still, this was really dull stuff and Kabir found
himself day-dreaming and longing for the coffee break. What a pity he had
missed the introductions. There would probably have been an icebreaker – an
opportunity to get to know his colleagues. He had recognized some of the names
on the list of participants circulated in advance: Aggrey, Alice, Tendai. He
scanned the hall in search of a familiar face.
Finally, the grey-haired man stopped speaking and
the chairperson invited questions from the floor. There was a long silence
before a few arms began to waggle tentatively. Each question was enunciated
twice: the first time inaudibly and the second in a crackle of static and
feedback once the secretariat member with the microphone had arrived at the
correct row. After an age, the chairperson finally closed the session and sent
the participants off to coffee, telling them they would reassemble in their
working groups.
Kabir had requested in advance to be in the
working group on Using International Complaints Mechanisms. He would have to
find out where the group was meeting.
He filed out of the meeting hall to the cavernous
atrium where coffee was being served, along with savoury pastries, sandwiches
and sticky sweets, although they had all finished their breakfast barely an
hour earlier. He had just been handed a cup of coffee when he saw Tendai and
Alice making their way around the edge of the huddle of workshop participants.
Kabir called out and started to move towards them. But he turned too suddenly
and his cup teetered on its saucer. Time slowed down for the few seconds that
Kabir watched his cup balancing on its rim before, inevitably, tipping and
spilling its contents.
It could have been worse. Somehow the cascading
coffee missed all the surrounding workshoppers – quite something, considering
the tight press around the counter. It hit the floor and splashed up, causing
the alert among them to jump out of the way. The only real damage seemed to be
the droplets of coffee up the back of the long legs of a tall blonde woman who
had been looking the wrong way. Kabir immediately proffered the paper napkin
that had enwrapped his samoosa. The woman politely used the napkin to wipe
streaks of grease onto her legs.
Kabir’s heartfelt apologies meant that the woman
suppressed her irritation (although it would recur later when she discovered
the greeny-yellow trail of ghee on her calves). She introduced herself. Her
name was Eva and she was from Sweden.
“What did you think of the opening session?” Eva
asked him.
Kabir hesitated. “It wasn’t, er, exactly what I
was expecting,” he said.
“Oh, don’t worry. We get that every year. We just
have to let Adebayo have his say. We’ll get down to the real stuff in the next
session.”
Kabir asked her where the working groups were.
Eva told him that membership of the working group was colour-coded. She pointed
out the red border on his name badge. That told him which group he was in.
Eva’s was red too – they were in the same group.
Kabir walked with Eva to the lift and they went
up to the nineteenth floor where they would find their break-out room. As the
others arrived, Kabir introduced himself politely.
The convener of the working group was a smartly
dressed man called Jeff (or possibly Geoff). When Jeff called for a volunteer
to be rapporteur – to deliver an account of proceedings back to the plenary –
Kabir’s hand shot up. Jeff seemed to hesitate and looked around the room, but
there were no other offers.
“Okay,” Jeff said. “So, the rapporteur for group
3 is er…”
“Kabir,” said Kabir.
Jeff explained that they were going to start with
a brainstorm. As rapporteur it was Kabir’s job to record proceedings on the
flipchart.
Jeff said that at this stage all ideas were
equally valid, so people should feel free to share whatever was on their mind.
Later it would be possible to unpack the ideas and draw the linkages, he said.
Kabir was not entirely clear what was going on,
but he felt that in the key role of rapporteur he was not really able to say
anything. On Jeff’s instruction he wrote the single word “Benchmarks” across
the top of the flipchart in blue marker pen. Then – in the initial moment of
uneasiness and silence following Jeff’s injunction to “be prepared to think
outside the box” – Kabir underlined the word. Then he underlined it again in
red. And in green.
They were slow starting, but then they got going.
Kabir could scarcely keep pace with the barrage of suggestions. He ended up
with a long list: “Indicator. Quantitative. Qualitative. Standards. Core
competencies. Synergy. Paradigm. Result-driven. Outcomes-based. Proactive.
Empowerment. Mindset (how to change). Networking. Community of practice. Best
practices. Sustainability,” the last of which he drew a ring round and
highlighted with asterisks on Jeff’s instruction.
Kabir had assumed that they would start unpacking
straight away. Indeed, he said as much when Jeff launched into an exposition of
the “strategic priorities”. Jeff assured him there would be plenty of time to
revisit this later. Kabir sat jotting the odd word on his hotel notepad, using
his plastic hotel ball pen: “Contextualize. Touch base. Fast track…”
Finally, after an hour that mostly consisted of
Jeff talking, it was lunchtime. Kabir felt out of his depth and he was unsure how
he was going to report the discussion back to the plenary. He confessed this to
Eva as they took the lift back to the ground floor.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your job is just to
reflect the discussion. Anyway, you won’t need to report until we have developed
a checklist of recommendations.”
“Oh,” said Kabir. “That should be alright then.”
Apparently the group photograph was going to be
taken now, on the first lunchtime. This was to allow time to print copies for
everyone to take home with them. The other working groups seemed to have
finished more quickly and Eva and Kabir joined the back row behind their
colleagues and an unfurled conference banner. The official photographer
arranged them, pulling in a few stragglers from the outer edges, and clicked a
few times. Then came a clamour as smart little digital cameras were produced
and handed to the photographer, often with whispered instructions about the
machine’s technical eccentricities. Kabir politely asked the photographer to
take one for him, proffering his own bottom-of-the-range model. The
photographer obliged and passed it back to him. The group broke up in a
desultory fashion before everyone’s desire for a memento was properly
satisfied.
Kabir left Eva in earnest discussion with Jeff –
they just needed to touch base, she explained – and went back inside to find
the lunchroom. In the hotel atrium, he stopped and squinted at the picture on
the tiny display screen of his camera. He was puzzled; something seemed not
quite right. But he did not have a chance to work out precisely what, for at
that moment he glimpsed Tendai and Alice across the atrium. Glancing quickly
around to make sure that there were no hot beverages in the vicinity, Kabir
started off towards them. They were making their way towards a room far away on
the other side of the hall. Above the door was a banner with the UN symbol and
this notice in clear black letters:
“UN Regional Workshop on Training of Trainers for
Sustainable Human Rights Protection.”
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