2nd December 2025
In cybersecurity, there are no limits – only new voices ready to lead
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
14th October 2025
Lost and Found (but mostly lost)
13th October 2025
UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls: September visits to Sarajevo and New York
1st August 2019 London,UK
Food and Power
The Oxford Food Symposium has not always held an obvious link to foreign policy, but diplomacy was there at its conception. It was co-founded by a diplomat named Alan Davidson, whose Foreign Office career ended as Ambassador to Laos in the early 1970s. It was while on a posting to Tunisia that Davidson, frustrated at […]
31st July 2019 Vientiane, Laos
Ambassador Hugh Evans Receives Honorary Doctorate Degree from University of Nottingham
On 28 July 2019, UK Ambassador to Laos Hugh Evans received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Nottingham for his dedication to and successes in the education sector in Lao PDR. He accepted his degree at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus, with the following speech. ‘Prof. Graham Kendall, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University […]
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31st July 2019 Vientiane, Laos
In Laos, women hold up ‘more than half the sky’
The Queen’s Birthday Party or Women United Festival took place on the 5 June 2019 at the Crowne Plaza, Vientiane. This is the full speech delivered by His Excellency Hugh Evans, UK Ambassador to Lao PDR, to open the night. Our Chief Guests: Your Excellencies, Madame Sengdeuane Lachantaboun, Minister of Education and Sports and HE. […]
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30th July 2019
A newsroom of one’s own: why the talk about media freedom should be attentive to gender
Priscila Bellini is a Brazilian journalist and a Chevening Scholar studying Gender, Media and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. What does it mean to report freely on issues of public interest, if we are to be attentive to gender? After all, the stories we cover are, oftentimes, marked by gender. […]
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23rd July 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
International Law and the Commonwealth
Last month I squeezed in a visit to Kigali in Rwanda for the 5th Commonwealth Red Cross and Red Crescent Conference on International Humanitarian Law (IHL). I was there to speak on two panels, about the UK’s recent report on implementation of IHL and about our forthcoming global summit on preventing sexual violence in conflict. The UK […]
23rd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
Media freedom
A campaigning journalist in Mexico receives a call before dawn about an incident at a night club. He quickly goes there. As he arrives, he is shot dead – one of 99 journalists killed worldwide in 2018. This vivid example was given by the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, at a conference on media freedom in […]
22nd July 2019
Freedom of Expression as a Fundamental Pillar of Democratic Societies
Dina Meza is an award winning Honduran journalist and defender of freedom of expression. She is the director of human rights organisation ASOPODEHU. Susi Bascon has been the director of the UK section of Peace Brigades International since 1998 an organisation that currently provides live saving support and protection to over 800 Human Rights Defenders […]
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22nd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
Brexit in Vienna: a busy July
These are busy times in London and Vienna. A new Prime Minister will take office in London shortly. The UK is due to leave the EU by 31 October at the latest. In Austria, a new Austrian interim government was sworn in on 3 June, with elections due on 29 September. The UK has been […]
20th July 2019 Stockholm, Sweden
British Council impact (and new offices) in Ukraine
One of the many things that the UK and Ukraine have in common is a keen interest in quality education. We are both countries that like to study (and play!) hard. The UK remains a destination of choice for Ukrainian students, who often leave my country as star graduates. International students come to the UK […]
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18th July 2019 Madrid
Digital Diplomacy – learning by doing
A few weeks ago I spoke to some FCO new entrants about social media and diplomacy. They were quite an intimidating audience not least since I assumed that most of them had already forgotten more about social media than I would ever learn. I explained how digital diplomacy had been perhaps the area of my […]