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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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The climate crisis and gender-based violence
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26th June 2014 London, UK
Keeping the faith: the global prevention of torture
Guest blog by Matthew Sands, Legal Adviser, Association for the Prevention of Torture I keep a quote on my desk from Jean Améry, who wrote about his utter despair while being held in concentration camps during the Second World War, and refer to it often. It reads: “Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured. [Our] […]
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26th June 2014 London, UK
Tackling Impunity: Why the Voices of Survivors Must Be Heard
Guest blog by Kolbassia Haoussou, survivor of torture, and Coordinator of the Survivors Speak OUT Network For too long torture has been used to punish and silence. Perpetrators have used their abhorrent tools with impunity, in the knowledge that they will never be held to account by survivors, for fear of stigma, shame and further […]
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26th June 2014 Geneva, Switzerland
Uniting Against Torture
Guest blog by Bob Last, Senior Human Rights Adviser, UK Mission to the UN, Geneva There have been lots of admiring words spoken about Costa Rica of late, and their World Cup performances have left me and many of my compatriots more than a little envious. When I arrived in Geneva in spring 2002, Costa […]
26th June 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Australian Parliament celebrates Scotland, as part of the UK
With names like Scott, Cameron, Macdonald, Ferguson and McKenzie, the MPs and Senators who organised last night’s Scottish Dinner in Australia’s Parliament House had a gleam in their eyes at the swirl of the bagpipes and the clink of the whisky glass. Some of them have more distant ancestral links to Scotland, like my own. […]
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25th June 2014 Toronto, Canada
The most interesting article on digital diplomacy you’ll read all day
This article originally appeared in the Whitsun 2014 (Vol 71 No 2) edition of Science in Parliament, the journal of the UK’s Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. You’re browsing a news site, and see the following link: 12 risky British discoveries that changed our world. Do you click it? Even though it’s recognisably link bait, carefully […]
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25th June 2014 Washington DC, USA
Impressions from Pyongyang
“What do British people hate?” A straightforward question – but context is everything. When posed by an earnest thirteen-year-old North Korean schoolboy, in a Q&A discussion with British diplomatic visitors, it took me by surprise. But then much of what my colleagues and I experienced during a week-long familiarisation visit to the Democratic People’s Republic […]
25th June 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Boosting schools’ IT and literacy skills through fishing and beaches.
I had heard that the Grand Turk Fishing Tournament was a big event for the island, but I hadn’t expected the crowds it drew to Governor’s Beach this June. They far outnumbered the visitors from the cruise ships who regularly stroll along the beach. The Tournament was arranged by a group of volunteers who in […]
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25th June 2014 Sofia, Bulgaria
What Time Is It?
by Keneward Hill Keneward Hill has been living in Bulgaria for more than 20 years now. Linguist himself, he is also a husband of Mariana Hill, the famous interpreter from English and German to Bulgarian language. For the 100 Years UK in BG blog, Ken shared a memory of an unforgettable train ride from Bourgas […]
25th June 2014
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Creativity is GREAT
Is creativity something you are born with or something you can learn? It is probably a bit of both nature and nurture: natural talent and inspirational education. For example, a musician can’t improvise until he or she has learnt to master an instrument. The theme of creativity was prominent in a party we held last […]
25th June 2014 Ottawa, Canada
Fighting a ‘quiet crisis’
Dementia is a top priority for the UK and Canada. Today, more than 40 million people worldwide are living with dementia and, with ageing populations this number is set to double every 20 years. The economic costs of this are astonishing, with US$604 B spent in 2010 alone (of which approximately 70 per cent was […]