23rd July 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
Last month I squeezed in a visit to Kigali in Rwanda for the 5th Commonwealth Red Cross and Red Crescent Conference on International Humanitarian Law (IHL). I was there to speak on two panels, about the UK’s recent report on implementation of IHL and about our forthcoming global summit on preventing sexual violence in conflict. The UK […]
Read more on International Law and the Commonwealth | Reply
7th January 2019
Geneva, Switzerland
It is fair to say that the UK and Argentina have had their differences. Yet at the end of 2018 the Permanent Missions of the Argentine Republic and the United Kingdom came together, with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to commemorate the completion of a joint humanitarian project to […]
Read more on Identifying Fallen Soldiers | Reply
26th February 2016
Geneva, Switzerland
I am not your typical intern. I am about to turn 35, I have 2 children aged 5 and 3, and a previous career as a Barrister. I traded in late night briefs, daily court advocacy and negotiations, and challenging clients for the trials and tribulations of child rearing and home making. Eighteen months ago […]
Read more on Not your typical intern | Reply (1)
8th February 2016
Geneva, Switzerland
Last week’s conference in London did not solve the Syrian refugee crisis. That requires an end to the conflict. The suspension of the peace talks in Geneva last week shows we’re not even at the end of the beginning of that process, as Churchill might have said. But London did some important things. It raised […]
Read more on Solving the Syrian Refugee Crisis | Reply (1)
16th November 2015
Geneva, Switzerland
How can Geneva help Paris? I was going to write this week about antimicrobial resistance, the stealthily spreading obsolescence of antibiotics that will cost the world an estimated 10 million lives a year by 2050 if we don’t act now. But after Friday, that somehow didn’t feel right. With over 130 mostly young people massacred […]
Read more on How Can Geneva Help Paris? | Reply
7th September 2015
Geneva, Switzerland
Who could fail to be moved by the photograph last week of the little Syrian boy on a Turkish beach? We have long grown numb to the statistics of the Syrian conflict yet here was a picture that captured with blinding clarity the human tragedy. Hundreds of little Aylans have drowned in the Mediterranean far […]
Read more on The Tragedy and Reality of Europe’s Refugee and Migration Crisis | Reply
11th May 2015
Geneva, Switzerland
Grahame Greene’s novel about Geneva ignores it, focusing instead on the nasty foibles of the very rich. And if they mention it at all, modern novelists writing about Geneva use the UN at best as a backdrop for international intrigue but more often as a metaphor for international impotence. For someone preparing to take up […]
Read more on Becoming our man in Geneva | Reply