3rd December 2024
RENEWING OLD TIES: THE NEW BISHOP OF LONDON
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
25th November 2024
The climate crisis and gender-based violence
8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
18th November 2015 London, UK
Legalisation: from alpha to beta
Throughout the alpha phase of our legalisation work we were measuring our work against the digital by default standard, and – inspired by the work of colleagues working onemergency travel documents – we set up a github wiki to document our work and evidence. By the end of the 7 weeks we were ready for […]
18th November 2015 Bucharest, Romania
Reflections Post A Marathon of Debates
Forty pairs of eyes watched us curiously in the library of the Josika Miklos High School. The teachers of the “Hungarian School”, as the high-school is known in this Transylvanian town still suffering the effects of de-industrialization and subsequent migration, invited me to talk to the students about trafficking in persons. Much to their praise, […]
17th November 2015 Montreal, Canada
Plan Nord: sustainable development in action
Inspiring, fascinating, stunning, challenging, desolate – just some of the adjectives that my trip to the far North of Quebec conjured up. The visit was my first to the region and was organised for the diplomatic corps by Quebec’s Ministry for International Relations, hosted by the foreign minister Christine St. Pierre. The destination for our […]
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17th November 2015 Khartoum
Prospects for Peace and Stability in Darfur
I come from a country that has been facing internal war for more than half a century. And I am part of a generation branded as “children of conflict”. I try not to forget those times now that I am a Project Officer at the British Embassy Khartoum in charge of delivering “Conflict Prevention Programmes”. Having […]
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17th November 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Business in Turkey: good news
Three Turkish mobile phone companies bid for frequencies to roll out a new high-tech service known in Turkey as 4.5G. Billions of euro change hands, and the companies walk away with a variety of packages and bandwidth allocations. Who wins? I wrote a blog last February called “Business in Turkey: The rules of the Game”. […]
16th November 2015 Geneva, Switzerland
How Can Geneva Help Paris?
How can Geneva help Paris? I was going to write this week about antimicrobial resistance, the stealthily spreading obsolescence of antibiotics that will cost the world an estimated 10 million lives a year by 2050 if we don’t act now. But after Friday, that somehow didn’t feel right. With over 130 mostly young people massacred […]
16th November 2015 New Delhi, India
UK innovation express tour
One week, four Indian cities and over 300 Indian attendees gives SIN an opportunity to promote the UK’s excellence in innovation and incubation and celebrate ‘Technology is GREAT’ across India. The SIN India team and UK innovation experts showcased the strengths of our innovation and incubation ecosystem in India. Experts from Cambridge Enterprise, IdeaSpace, Isis […]
15th November 2015 Canberra, Australia
Solidarité
This time last year, I was in Paris with my family, visiting friends and exploring one of the world’s most beautiful cities. We did the usual things – climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited Sacré-Coeur, gazed at the impressionist art at Musée d’Orsay, ate in cafes and restaurants. And on an unusually warm Autumn weekend, we […]
13th November 2015 Science and Innovation Network
Arctic Circle: something for everyone?
The vision for the Arctic Circle conference is that it should be an Arctic version of Davos and therefore it caters for a wide variety interests. Despite being only 3 years old, the conference has grown into an event with almost 2000 delegates from around 50 countries, and with representation including princes and presidents! It […]
13th November 2015 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Looking forward in remembrance
On 8 November, we gathered at the Liveramentu War Graves in the Torrington Road cemetery for the annual reflection on sacrifice and the horrors of war that is Remembrance Sunday. The Act of Remembrance was as moving as ever. Bright Sri Lankan sunshine reflected off the rows of white headstones. Veterans, children, diplomats and serving […]