21st March 2016 Geneva, Switzerland
The Syrian conflict is the source of the most immediate threats now facing the United Kingdom and Europe. Dealing with it has become the most important agenda in Geneva. Our citizens have travelled to the conflict and came back radicalised and ready to commit acts of terrorism. Regional rivals have been drawn into the conflict […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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4th July 2013
Trafficking in human beings – for forced labour, for sex, for their organs – has been with us as long as one human has exploited another. That is no reason why we should resign ourselves to its existence in the 21st century. The British government sees tackling modern slavery as an important global priority. And yet, […]
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11th January 2012
People sometimes wonder what an embassy does; and what international co-operation really means. By way of an interesting concrete example, the British Embassy organised a visit late last year by experts from the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre to meet their Ukrainian counterparts. The CEOP experts also met Ukrainian and international NGOs […]
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7th December 2011
Good news this week as the Holy See on 5 December joined the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Why is this important? The Holy See’s “Ambassador” (Permanent Observer) to the UN in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, summed it up well in an interview he gave to Vatican Radio: “as we are witnessing a continuous […]
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