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Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
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The climate crisis and gender-based violence
8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
10th March 2017 Skopje, North Macedonia
How do you know that the taxes you pay are being spent wisely?
Here’s a question for the average person in Macedonia: how do you know that the taxes you pay are being spent wisely? It’s a simple question but actually on that’s quite difficult to answer. Some might be happy to just trust those spending your tax money. But others will want to be more questioning. They […]
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10th March 2017
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Farewell to Arkhangelsk
I have made over a dozen visits to Arkhangelsk since autumn 2013. It’s a very special place in Russia for the UK and I was keen to make one final visit before I leave Russia to thank our key contacts and underline our commitment to future friendship and engagement. Visiting Arkhangelsk has been a highlight […]
9th March 2017 Tokyo, Japan
Six years after the tsunami, Japanese resilience
On 11 March, it will be six years since the people of East Japan suffered the triple blows of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. None of us, around the world, will forget watching the terrible footage on our TV screens. For Japan it was the most significant domestic event for decades. So I was keen […]
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8th March 2017 Science Innovation USA
A Tale of Two Power Systems – Plugging Innovation into the Electricity Grid
Above Photo: March 02, 2017- Attendees collaborate during a break out session at the U.K.-U.S. Grid Modernization Collaboration Workshop at the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL) I was really pleased to be able to attend and participate in the UK-US […]
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8th March 2017 Beirut, Lebanon
#IWD2017: Give women the chance to succeed
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Lebanon is a beautiful country. Its young people are some of the most talented in the world; its workforce one of the best educated; its businessmen amongst the most savvy and its artists among the most creative. But there is something else I need to say […]
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8th March 2017 London, UK
Women leading British diplomacy across Europe
“I would venture to guess than Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman” – Virginia Woolf hit the nail on the head. Too often the incredible work and leadership provided by women has been obscured by modesty, self-doubt, or in some cases outright sexism. The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth […]
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8th March 2017 Guatemala City
Emmeline Pankhurst and Gladys Lanza: being bold for change
Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffragette who led the fight – and it really was a fight – for women’s right to vote in the UK at the turn of the 20th century, is Manchester’s most famous daughter. I feel a particular affinity to her, not only because Manchester is my home town, but also because her […]
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8th March 2017
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Shifting Dynamics
I am one of 20 women ambassadors at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We are 35% of the total (possibly the highest proportion at any multilateral organisation?). Women are also well represented at other levels in many OSCE delegations. It has been suggested to me that this might be because the OSCE […]
8th March 2017 Vienna, Austria
How to break the barriers that hold back women and girls
When I was in Kyiv, some Ukrainian colleagues used to express scepticism about International Women’s Day. They saw it as tokenism; a relic of the bad old days when Soviet authorities gave lip-service to women’s rights while men dominated positions of power. One result was that although I wrote several blogs to mark International Women’s […]
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8th March 2017 Geneva, Switzerland
Shining A Spotlight On The World’s Human Rights Problems
The March session of the Human Rights Council is the most significant event in the UN human rights calendar. Well over a hundred ministers were in Geneva for the first week, last week. So now is a good time to take stock of the significance of this body and why it matters. To some it […]
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