14th October 2025
Lost and Found (but mostly lost)
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
13th October 2025
UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls: September visits to Sarajevo and New York
17th July 2025
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
20th May 2019
The biggest challenge to a robust media is relevancy
Berna Namata has been a business journalist for more than six years, mostly in Rwanda. She spent a year in London as a Chevening scholar. She returned in 2017 and currently works in Rwanda for the Nation Media Group’s popular regional weekly newspaper, The East African. In this guest blog for the Foreign Office, she […]
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16th May 2019
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
LGBT rights are human rights
As British Ambassador in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), I am proud to stand up for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights, which are fundamental human rights, and the fight against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 17 May is International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, better known as IDAHOBIT, […]
13th May 2019 King Charles Street, London
Technology boosting the UK-India Relationship
Since 1999, May 11 of every year is celebrated as National Technology Day in India. Observed to commemorate the Pokhran nuclear tests, the day also praises the significance of science and technology in India’s growth as a nation. Becoming the sixth nuclear state of the world was not the sole thing India attained on that […]
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10th May 2019 Vienna, Austria
Celebrating Vienna’s Third Man Legacy
As a big fan of The Third Man I was delighted to attend two events last week, celebrating 70 years of the 1949 classic in Vienna. My previous blogs on the film, including how I re-named the bedrooms in the British Ambassador’s residence after scenes from the Third Man, are here and here. First, I […]
3rd May 2019 Gaborone, Botswana
Defending Media Freedom
On 2 May, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, addressed the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day celebrations, hosted by the African Union in Addis Ababa. He noted that, in a world where, in 2018 alone, 99 journalists were killed, some of the brightest spots of hope on press freedom were in Africa. The latest World […]
3rd May 2019 Hanoi
Freedom of expression and press freedom – striking the balance between freedom and regulation
World Press Freedom Day is celebrated across the globe on 3 May. We, as Ambassadors of Canada and the UK, believe that free and independent media play a vital role in social and economic prosperity, the protection of human rights and in holding the powerful to account. That is why our two countries have recently […]
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30th April 2019 Khartoum, Sudan
Freedom, Peace and Justice. Revolution is the Choice of the People
I marked my one year anniversary as the British Ambassador to Sudan this week. When I started this job, I could not have imagined finding myself in the situation we are in now. Sudan had experienced 30 years of authoritarian rule. These were 30 years of conflict and secession, of repression and extremism, of sanctions […]
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29th April 2019 Geneva, Switzerland
Disarmament blog: preparing for the NPT Review Conference
The third session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opens today at UN Headquarters in New York. (Otherwise known as the NPT RevCon PrepCom; while we work tirelessly against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we’re quite happy to proliferate jargon.) Over the next […]
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29th April 2019 Vienna, Austria
Vienna Girlsday: lessons in Styrian dialect and a visit to Burgenland
Last week, for the second year running, the British Embassy Vienna took part in the “Vienna Girlsday”. I certainly learned a lot. The aim of the “Girlsday” (in German it is called “Töchtertag” or “daughters’ day”) is to introduce young women to areas of work where women are under-represented. In the UK in 2019 we […]
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18th April 2019 Vienna, Austria
Are British gardens the best? Visit Britain and decide for yourself!
I was delighted last month to attend the annual spring opening of Praskac Pflanzenland, one of Austrian’s largest gardening suppliers. Praskac rather brilliantly have this year chosen the theme of “English Gardens”. Based close to Tulln in Lower Austria, Praskac was founded in 1875. The company is one of Austria’s largest distributors of English roses; […]
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