15th August 2014 Budapest, Hungary
Guest blog by Theresa Bubbear, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Budapest. On Thursday the team and I headed back to Sziget for day 2 of our Embassy engagement. Budapest thoughtfully provided some British festival weather for us – it poured almost all day, and the mud came up as the rain came […]
14th August 2014 Budapest, Hungary
Guest blog by Theresa Bubbear, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Budapest. In 2012 I blogged about my first experience of Sziget. Yesterday I went back to see what was happening and what had changed. This year’s festival is bigger and better than ever, with 400,000 visitors expected and some top […]
13th August 2014
The following is a guest blog by Steve Townsend, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy to the Holy See On 13 August 1964, Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans made British judicial history, although not in a way they would have appreciated. They were the last people executed in the United Kingdom. Throughout the […]
30th July 2014
In my last blog posting on the concept of “the common good”, I noted that the Archbishop of Canterbury had included UK efforts to tackle human trafficking as one of three specific areas in which, in his view, Her Majesty’s Government was working for the common good. 30 July is the UN World Day against […]
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21st July 2014 Brasilia, Brazil
For those of us who are involved with Human Rights – whether it is our job, or just a cause we support – there is always a tricky question to answer: how far should we go to defend these principles without imposing our values into different cultures and traditions? How much should we respect these […]
27th June 2014
Earlier this week I was in London to address an in-house training programme of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on religion and foreign policy. The course is aimed at British diplomats, but also public servants from other government ministries; there were a number of participants this week from the Ministry of Defence, and on […]
26th June 2014 London, UK
Guest blog by the British Embassy Tunis, Tunisia The slogans of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia were ‘Freedom’ and ‘Dignity’. Tackling torture, widespread under the Ben Ali regime, was among the popular demands in the aftermath of the overthrow of Ben Ali. Respect for Human Rights is a key goal of Tunisia’s new democratic […]
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8th June 2014 Brasilia, Brazil
Rape and sexual violence has been a part of war as far back as we know. It occurs both as a consequence of conflict but is also used as a weapon in itself. It is civilians (all sexes and ages) who suffer the most . We do not think this is inevitable. It’s time to […]
6th June 2014 Havana, Cuba
Before I joined the Foreign Office I spent many years working for humanitarian NGOs in central Africa – Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo – where I experienced first-hand the horrors of war and the devastation it can bring to communities, families and individuals. In those conflicts and others, one of the most […]
16th May 2014 London, UKMadrid, Spain
It’s an important day for the British Government. We are working hard to uphold the rights and freedoms of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities across the world. We believe that countries must work together to address all forms of discrimination, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and to promote […]
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