8th November 2024
Ecolabels: A Catalyst for Sustainable Food Choices?
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
17th October 2024
OSLOBOĐENJE BEOGRADA
11th October 2024
Busting the gender myths – women and organised crime
12th December 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
Argentina, The UK, And Overcoming The Legacy Of The Past
Until now, my enduring memory of the Falklands War was of a car park in Washington DC. My father was serving in our Embassy there at the time. Later it was claimed that the US simply handed key military components over to us in the Embassy’s car park, so urgent was the cause, so deep […]
Read more on Argentina, The UK, And Overcoming The Legacy Of The Past | Reply
12th December 2016 Vilnius, Lithuania
Why I am – opening an exhibition on Shakespeare at the Lithuanian Parliament
On 14 December we will hold an event to open the British Embassy’s exhibition on William Shakespeare at the Lithuanian Parliament. 2016 is, of course, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. He is a great British cultural figure familiar around the globe. Half the world’s schoolchildren study his work. His plays have been performed in […]
Read more on Why I am – opening an exhibition on Shakespeare at the Lithuanian Parliament | Reply (1)
11th December 2016 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Human Rights Day
This week we celebrate the 68th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For the people of Yemen who have suffered during two years of war this must feel like an abstract and distant concept. Prior to the conflict Yemen was already one of the poorest countries in the region and now, as a […]
10th December 2016 London, UK
International Human Rights Day
10 December is Human Rights Day and around the world British Embassies will be expressing their commitment to universal fundamental rights. We do this because human rights are important in themselves. But they are also good for our societies and economies. The World Bank have said respect for human rights can “improve development outcomes and […]
10th December 2016 London, UK
Human Rights Day 2016
Box-ticking, or changing the real world? That was a question posed at our Minister’s event to mark Human Rights Day. Most people I talk to are ready to agree that the UK government tries to do the right thing. But many wonder whether we are getting past the level of generic reassurances, from other governments […]
9th December 2016 Science and Innovation Network
Standing on the shoulders of giants
Once a year, the global scientific community is honoured and celebrated during the Nobel Prize Award ceremony in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Sweden has been the birthplace of some of the world’s leading researchers, including the Nobel Prize founder and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel. Sweden also boasts some of the world’s leading research […]
9th December 2016 Guatemala City
Human Rights Day
Saturday 10 December marks UN Human Rights Day, which commemorates the day on which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Speaking in London on the eve of her visit to Guatemala, the Minister at the Foreign Office with special responsibility for human rights, Baroness Anelay, said: “All […]
9th December 2016 Holy See
Standing Up against Slavery
On 10 December, the UN will commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The focus this year is “standing up for the rights of others”: a call to uphold human rights in our global community, where each of us can make a difference. The Foreign Office in London and all British Embassies […]
9th December 2016 Shanghai
Tackling the ‘superbug’ that threatens the future of medicine
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR for short) could be the biggest killer you’ve never heard of. Last year an estimated 700,000 people around the world died from AMR. And this figure is increasing rapidly. If left unchecked, deaths will increase to 10 million per year by 2050. To put that in context, 8.2 million people globally died […]
Read more on Tackling the ‘superbug’ that threatens the future of medicine | Reply
9th December 2016 Colombo, Sri Lanka
Trading Together
On Monday, I went to the opening of the London Stock Exchange Group’s new technology hub in Sri Lanka. The hub is in the TRACE Expert City precinct of Colombo. It’s a lovely location: working closely with the Urban Development Authority, the Group’s architects have converted beautiful old brick railway buildings into light and spacious […]