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
2nd July 2019 Vienna, Austria
Where does the rain fall? London, Vienna… or Rome?
Very, very, occasionally, when it rains in Austria, an Austrian friend will say to me “Englisches Wetter, ha ha!” I smile politely. The UK is famously rainy, correct? We’ve all read Sherlock Holmes stories where it seems to be raining and foggy all the time. In “Asterix in Britain”, Asterix asks the Briton, Anticlimax, as […]
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1st July 2019 London,UK
Waxing Lyrical
Madame Tussauds is one of those attractions that Londoners tend to dismiss as aimed mostly at visitors to the city. And it is not the easiest of places to get in, as the successful navigation of a queue to buy a ticket earns you a place in another queue to enter the museum. But it […]
27th June 2019 Skopje, North Macedonia
First Skopje Pride parade and the 50th anniversary of Stonewall riots
Introduction by HM Ambassador Rachel Galloway, British Embassy Skopje: The strongest, safest and most prosperous societies are those in which all citizens can live freely without fear of violence or discrimination, and where all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, can play a full and active part in society. This Saturday Skopje will […]
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27th June 2019 King Charles Street, London
Celebrating women in science
Someone rightly said, the only barrier to promotion should be talent and effort. But women who account for almost 50% of the world’s population, whose contributions to our society are key to its functioning, despite exceling in a variety of fields have abysmal representation in them. One such area is Science, where less than 30% […]
26th June 2019
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
I Fought The Rule of Law, and The Rule of Law Won*
The rule of law. It’s a phrase I hear almost every day. I probably use it as often. It is the basis of complaints from citizens, accusations between politicians, and criticisms from civil society. It is at the heart of the European Commission’s recent ‘Opinion’ on BiH. I am not sure we know what we […]
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25th June 2019
Female reporters must prove themselves twice
Sheila Nduhukire has been a journalist for more than eight years, most recently working as a senior news anchor and reporter for NTV Uganda. She’s currently on a Chevening scholarship at Cardiff University in the UK. In this guest blog for the Foreign Office, she talks about being forced to prove herself as a female […]
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21st June 2019 London,UK
Acid Drops
When I first received the diagnosis of “reflux”, I was almost pleased. It had a commonplace sort of sound. I had feared worse. But what this really said is that I didn’t understand what reflux meant. I have soon come to realise that I was not alone in that. I have always been very British […]
18th June 2019 Stockholm, Sweden
Supporting UK Cleantechnology’s Access to Finance
According to the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5 degree report, the world must see an annual investment of $2.4 trillion in clean energy through 2035 to limit our global average temperature increase within 1.5 degrees and stave off some of the most catastrophic damage from climate change. Considering the longer payback […]
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18th June 2019 Beijing, China
UK and China join hands to address agricultural challenges
Spring is an important season for farmers as it is a season that they start to sow and hope for a bumper harvest in autumn; it is also the season for agricultural production which helps to maintain the stability of economic development. This spring saw the kick-off of our Newton Fund UK-China Agri-tech Challenges projects. […]
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14th June 2019 Brazil
A Venezuelan exodus
Recently, I visited refugee camps on the Brazil-Venezuela border, talking to those who have escaped Venezuela. The main crossing point is a small Brazilian town called Pacaraima, at the very northern-most tip of the country, in the smallest, poorest Brazilian state of Roraima. A city of 12,000 inhabitants receives between 500 to 1,000 migrants a […]