12th November 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
What makes a young person want to pursue International Relations(IR) studies? Enter factors such as personal preferences, labour market, interest in the subject, among others. In Brazil, whatever the main reason is one thing we know for sure, it is clearly working. In times of globalizations and complex interdependence, talking about international relations sounds very […]
8th November 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Yesterday, the people of the Falkland Islands elected a new Legislative Assembly. So what? Who cares? Well, as a fan of the Islanders and an admirer of their way of life, I do. And much, much more importantly, the people who live on the Islands do. The Falkland Islanders are resourceful, resilient people. They need […]
6th November 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
A question that usually comes up when we talk about international exchange is: what is it good for? Exchange is, above all, about sharing. Different points of view, ideas, and cultures bring an important element to human knowledge: diversity. Great civilizations have their foundations in a mixture of different knowledge to produce knowledge in ancient […]
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1st November 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Brazilian health minister Alexandre Padilha announced plans on Monday to produce a combined measles and rubella vaccine for developing countries, mainly in Africa. Brazil is following other leading emerging nations such as China and India in investing in biomedical technology to supply vaccines and medicines to developing countries at lower costs than those produced by […]
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29th October 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Public diplomacy, digital diplomacy, e-diplomacy, diplomacy 2.0. Has diplomacy changed that much in current years that it has divided itself into so many different strands? In one of this blogs’ first posts, Chris stated that we are in the business of talking to strangers. We want to “explain our ideas more widely and we need […]
24th October 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Women are 50% of the population, 50% of the policy beneficiaries, and 90% of the casualties from armed conflict are civilian women and children; why not make them 50% of the decision making and peacekeeping processes? In the UK, women are 51% of the population, but only 22% of our parliamentary representatives, 23% of our […]
21st October 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Part of my role is dedicated to international negotiations on climate change, and the science used to feed the policy discussions has equal importance. That said, I have spent quite a lot of time over the past fortnight going through the findings of the first volume of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, published on 27 […]
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18th October 2013
This week sees the 2013 Seoul Conference on Cyberspace, the third in a series of conferences following London 2011 and Budapest 2012. The Conference takes place in the context of a debate in Brazil and abroad about the future of the internet. Our Foreign Secretary has long been passionate about cyber (a broad term that […]
16th October 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
Today is Blog Action Day, an annual worldwide event where bloggers write about a single topic since 2007. Earlier this year over 800 Blog Action Day participants took part in a poll to help identify what the theme should be for 2013. The most popular votes and suggestions all fell under the banner of human rights, making […]
10th October 2013 Brasilia, Brazil
One of the first slang expressions I learnt in Portuguese was abacaxi (pineapple in English) used to describe a difficult issue. Iran’s relations with the international community could be described as an abacaxi. But are we at a moment of change in those relations with the arrival of President Rouhani? Since 2005, I have been […]
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