18th October 2013 Washington DC, USA
Tom Hanks and I fell out back in the early 1990’s. I’m not sure if he noticed. The problem was, first, that he won the Oscar for Philadelphia when I wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to get it for In the Name of the Father. Then, to rub salt in my movie-nerd wounds, the awful Forrest Gump […]
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30th September 2013 Geneva, Switzerland
Council sessions are bad for your health. So bad, in fact, that I’m thinking of inviting colleagues from the World Health Organisation along to the next session to see if they agree with me that all delegates should be issued with a health warning so that they can take suitable precautions at the outset. The […]
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23rd September 2013 Geneva, Switzerland
I’ve often thought that subscribers to chaos theory would do well to spend a week or two watching meetings at the Human Rights Council. The principal idea is that a small random change at one point can result in major unexpected consequences later on. It would be fascinating to try to catalogue the seemingly minor […]
22nd May 2013 Chevening, UK
The following is a guest post by Faiza Abdirashid. Faiza is a 2012 Chevening Scholar from Somalia studying for an MSc in Public Policy at the University of Bristol. A recent meeting organised by three UK government departments (DFID, FCO and home Office) on 29rd April focussed on the challenges facing Somali women. It was a great […]
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9th May 2013
Prime Minister David Cameron and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia co-hosted an important conference on Somalia in London on 7 May. As I told Vatican Radio, the conference was held under very different circumstances from the February 2012 London Somalia conference. Shortly before then, Benedict XVI had called on the world to act in […]
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8th May 2013 Paris, France
We’ve been holding in London the second International Conference on Somalia – the first one was in February 2012. This time, it’s been co-chaired by the British Government and by the new President of Somalia. I used to work on the Somalia problem two years ago when I was National Security Adviser with David Cameron, […]
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30th April 2013 Washington DC, USA
Last week I went to Columbus to talk to representatives of the 50,000 or so Somali diaspora community living in Ohio. It was hosted at a community learning centre set up to help Somali youths succeed in school. It seems to be working as I was told growing numbers are going to university. I set […]
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19th April 2013 Chevening, UK
The upcoming conference in London, to be co-hosted by David Cameron and the Somali President, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, on May 7th, marks a new beginning in terms of Somalia’s relationship with the international world. This and the G8 Foreign Ministers Meeting last week, where Somalia was a key issue on the agenda, as well as […]
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3rd April 2013 Washington DC, USA
It is a warm morning, and I’m standing in a crowd of Africans. Many of the women are in brightly coloured dresses; the men sport a variety of styles of headdress. A minibus pulls up and we squeeze more of us on-board than I thought possible. As we’re about to shut the door someone leans […]
18th March 2013 Nairobi, Kenya
Last Thursday, the Federal Government of Somalia, together with the UK, hosted the latest meeting with a number of key international partners in Mogadishu. The location was significant. This was the first time such a meeting had been held in Mogadishu since the Federal Government came to power last year. It was a real demonstration […]
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