4th October 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
The three principles of disarmament are usually held to be verifiability, irreversibility and transparency. Transparency underpins the other two principles. You can’t tell whether what’s been done is irreversible unless you can verify it; you can’t verify it unless it’s transparent. As such, transparency, often in the shape of reporting by States Parties, is a […]
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11th July 2019
London, UK
Last year was the deadliest year on record for journalists. UNESCO records suggest that at least 99 journalists were killed, 348 imprisoned and 60 held hostage. That is why, this week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has jointly hosted with the Canadian government a major international conference in London, putting media freedom at the forefront […]
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3rd December 2018
Jonathan Drew: There are some things that need a very deep intake of breath before starting. Like writing to the PUS, six months into being a diplomat, to ask him to give his blessing to the formation of a staff LGBT+ group. On a cold November night twenty years ago, with some trepidation, I wrote that […]
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15th December 2016
Beijing, China
On 6th December I attended the 4th UK-China People to People Dialogue which is chaired by Vice Premier Liu Yandong and Jeremy Hunt. It covers a range of issues including science and innovation, education, health and culture. John Loughhead, Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, travelled to Shanghai to […]
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30th September 2016
Kolkata, India
I was sitting with a group of policemen and border officials in a police hut drinking sweet tea. The younger ones were looking at me anxiously as I started to ask them questions about their work and what they were doing. It was late morning and it was hot outside – around 35°C (or 95 […]
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13th September 2016
London, UK
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
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25th July 2016
London, UK
DTU one month in. On my first day as Product Manager in the Digital Transformation Unit (DTU) at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) it rained, hard. Having carefully selected a suit to wear, eager to give a good, professional first impression, I arrived looking like the proverbial drowned rat. Soaked through, I may have […]
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29th April 2016
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Annual Human Rights and Democracy Report was published on 21 April. This report is aimed at increasing awareness of the UK’s role in promoting human rights work overseas, and to encourage countries to uphold and maintain their international human rights record. The Report lists 30 human rights priority countries: these […]
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17th August 2015
One of the quirks of being posted to the Holy See is that it is one of the few in the world where Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission regularly have to wear diplomatic uniforms. It comes as a surprise to many that the Foreign Office has a uniform at all – unless they had […]
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1st July 2015
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
This is a networked world. And yet there are few genuinely global networks out there. By that I mean networks that have a capacity to operate globally, co-ordinated centrally but operating in capillary fashion, horizontally in a radial pattern as well as vertically in a hub and spoke model. One of the reasons why we […]
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