Mr. Niall Burgess:

I thank the Chair.

On the process, I should add that we had one brief conversation after 24 February 2021. This was because a colleague told me that the Biden administration was going to appoint a special envoy for LGBTI+ rights. I remember mentioning that to the Minister in an informal conversation shortly afterwards. I told him that we would look particularly at that area of the Department’s work, because the Department is active in the area of promoting LGBTI+ rights internationally. In fact, I think we took about two months to look at this from a number of different perspectives, before we had any further conversation. Initially, I asked a colleague to look at our own responsibilities under the National LGBTI+ Inclusion Strategy 2019-2021. Under that strategy, the Department has a responsibility for integrating the promotion of LGBTI+ rights across our foreign policy, for promoting that work at the United Nations and in regional organisations, for working with other countries and civil society organisations globally, and for improving outreach and support to LGBTI+ communities within our own diaspora.

In fact, that month, the Department briefed the interdepartmental committee in this regard. We got some input that basically told us that there would be value in trying to put more resources behind this work. At the same time, we undertook a review of practice on the part of EU partners and other countries with which we work particularly closely in the human rights field. EU partners, the UK, and the US all use dedicated envoys to support their promotion of human rights. I should say that these are not just for the promotion of human rights; the mechanism is increasingly deployed by other partners' foreign ministries. That shows that the practice is well-regarded by most partners. Eamon Gilmore serves as the EU’s special envoy for human rights. Partners with which we work closely, for example, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Lithuania - quite a number - are using the mechanism. Finally, we took a broad look, not just at LGBTI+ rights, but at the work we are doing across the spectrum in human rights.

Having reflected on that, we felt if we were appointing a human rights envoy, we were better to do it at a higher level and to look at some of the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That led us to look at the idea of a mandate for the promotion of freedom of opinion and expression. The idea behind that is that these are enabling rights which are enshrined in the universal declaration, are fundamental to the functioning of democracy and are under growing threat in many parts of the world.

That was the deliberative process that took place over a period of two months. We had no further discussion on the work during that period.