17th July 2025
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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
15th July 2025
International Day of Women in Diplomacy: UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls visit to Geneva
1st May 2025
The UN Commission on the Status of Women: My first visit as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls
26th December 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
The word of mouse
Nowadays, communication includes the freedom to express opinions in the Internet information environment and the freedom to discover them. That is to say, the freedom to speak and to hear. Moreover, this online environment gives a new perspective to what was once referred to as “word of mouth”. Now we might be tempted to call […]
24th December 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
A British Christmas
Christmas is coming. I’m looking forward to it as I’ve been busy recently, and need a break. What is so special about Christmas in Britain? As it is the time when many of us Christians remember the birth of Jesus, Christmas is above all for our children. This is the time when we celebrate them, […]
24th December 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Communicating the Good News
Pope Francis places great emphasis in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Guadium on communication. In large part, he declares, communicating the Gospel is the Church’s principal mission statement. This is not, of course, a new message, although the emphasis may be. But it was perhaps no coincidence that the Holy See recently announced that the means of communication […]
24th December 2013 London, UK
Making Progress
A little over a year ago, the Economist wrote a piece analysing Britain’s place in Europe. There wasn’t a lot of good news. Efforts to reform the way Brussels works were simply “making things worse” as “other countries are tiring of British demands”. The best we could hope for, it was argued, was to “rediscover […]
23rd December 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
2013: How the first year of a new B’ak’tun worked out for us
I know I am mixing my Mayan and Gregorian calendars but, since we were waiting for the end of the last B’ak’tun on 21 December 2012, so much has happened that this year feels like it is has gone by in a flash. With all that activity to cover I am inevitably going to forget […]
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23rd December 2013 Washington DC, USA
2013 in Review: Washington’s Development Highlights
This is a joint post by Andrew Preston and Rosanna Kim who work on international development issues at the British Embassy in Washington. We are loving all the different reviews of the past year, with the best and worst from the world of films, books, and music. So we thought it would be fun to […]
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23rd December 2013 Beirut, Lebanon
Five Challenges for Lebanon in 2014
A year ago, I shared elements of my annual review of the year in Lebanon. One year on, we’re still running to stand still. I’ve learnt three rules about diplomacy here. Never think you can understand Lebanon. Never think you can predict Lebanon. Never think you can fix Lebanon. However, breaking at least one of these […]
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23rd December 2013 Budapest, Hungary
British Alumni for innovation and competitiveness in the V4 countries
Guest blog by Dr. Zoltán Csedő, Member of the Board, Hungarian Association of British Alumni. It was a great privilege to launch the www.britishalumni.org knowledge-sharing portal at the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Wednesday 18 December. MFA Deputy State Secretary Gergely Prőhle hosted the launch event with British Ambassador Jonathan Knott. Ambassadors of the […]
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23rd December 2013 New Delhi, India
A Nobel week in New Delhi
The festive season has begun on a brilliant note with Dr Venki Ramakrishnan and Sir Paul Nurse, both UK based Nobel Laureates visiting Delhi last week. Dr Ramakrishnan delivered his public lecture on ‘Antibiotics and the Cell’s Protein Factory’ on Monday in AIIMS had a spell bound audience. The account of his lab’s work on […]
20th December 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Internship is GREAT!
The British Diplomatic Mission has one of the highest number of interns among other missions in Brazil. The partnership with Brazilian higher education institutions started in 2006. Currently there are 36 interns working in our different posts across the country. This is one of the best internship programmes available in the field of International Relations, my area […]