Global conversations
This is a guest blog from our Ambassador for one day Paola López According to the Oxford Dictionary, an Ambassador is “a representative or promoter of a specified activity”. However as ‘Ambassador for the Day’ in El Salvador on 8 May, I found out that in reality an ambassador, like Linda Cross, is someone sincerely friendly to those who they work with, responsible in every sense and charismatic even under the toughest pressure. Even though … Read more »“Two Ambassadors for the price of one!”
The following is a guest blog from William Meléndez, journalist from La Prensa Gráfica. In El Salvador nearly 20% of the population has now access to the Internet and that level of connectivity has led to an increase in the use of social networks like facebook, twitter and some more specialized but less well-known tools. In recent years, over a million Salvadoreans have connected to facebook and about 200,000 have a … Read more »Freedom of Expression with responsibility
Today I’m blogging from Stanley in the Falkland Islands. I’m here with a group of journalists from El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, as part of a programme to raise awareness of the views of Falkland Islanders across Latin America. In March this year, just a few weeks ago, the Falkland Islands held an historic referendum to consult Islanders on the political status of the Islands. They currently … Read more »Independence: why not?
Stewart Jackson MP guest blogs on the recent visit of the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (BGIPU) to El Salvador and Costa Rica. There are few more interesting places to visit in Central and Latin America than Costa Rica and El Salvador, the venues for an IPU Parliamentary outbound visit in February, the first for a number of years. Both have similar constitutional arrangements, a directly elected President, term … Read more »British Parliamentarians get insight into Central America
The following is a guest blog from Gordon Jonathan Lewis, UNICEF Representative in El Salvador, on the issue of sexual abuse in El Salvador. The problem of sexual abuse in El Salvador underscores two inescapable realities: the first one is that girls are the most vulnerable victims and that they are easy prey. The second reality is that, ironically, the majority of cases of sexual abuse against girls takes place within … Read more »Girls – easy prey
We have written here a number of times about El Salvador and its civil war and peace process. I had the opportunity over the last couple of weeks of considering its consequences and implications on three separate occasions. First of all, together with Zoe Smith, DHM in San Salvador, I visited the community of Santa Marta in Cabanas region, in the north-east of the country. It is not so far … Read more »Conflict, peace and reconstruction – not necessarily in that order!
Prime Minister David Cameron has recently been talking about the ‘golden thread of development’, including in the context of the UK’s Presidency of the G8. But what does it mean, and how is it relevant to El Salvador? When the Prime Minster refers to the golden thread of development, he is talking about a series of factors and conditions which contribute fundamentally to enabling the long-term and sustainable development of … Read more »The golden thread of development
This year El Salvador celebrates the 21st anniversary of the peace accords which ended its bloody civil war. The war between the right-wing government and left-wing guerrillas lasted around twelve years, and was finally brought to an end in 1992 through peace accords brokered by the UN and signed in Mexico City. Since the accords were signed, El Salvador has been widely recognised for having maintained a stable democratic system, … Read more »Peace processes – old and new
Last week we held an event to officially present to the Salvadoran Olympic and Paralympic Committees two of the petals which formed part of the spectacular cauldron of flames from London 2012. The designer of the cauldron, Thomas Heathwick, intended the petals to represent each participating delegation in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. They were assembled one by one by the delegations during the opening ceremony, eventually forming the spectacular … Read more »Celebrating the Olympic legacy in El Salvador
I am just back from 5 weeks in the UK where I attended part of the Prosperity Conference, had an audience with Her Majesty The Queen, and had three weeks leave over Christmas and New Year in a very wet and windy Scotland. It is good to be back in San Salvador, not least because the climate here is just about perfect! Five weeks is a long time to be … Read more »Keeping up the momentum