21st March 2024
Forests in focus on International Day of Forests
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
19th March 2024
Russia – 25 years of broken hopes and smashed dreams
8th March 2024
Gender equality is non-negotiable
5th August 2020 Vienna, Austria
COVID-19 vaccine developed in Austria – produced in Scotland
“When we started to develop our vaccine candidate we needed to push; now there is a massive pull from governments around the world,” says Thomas Lingelbach, CEO of Vienna-based pharmaceutical company Valneva, during my visit to his HQ at the Vienna Bio Center. Work is intense at Valneva when we visit. The Austro-French vaccine company […]
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30th July 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
Councils Completed
These are such strange days. We still don’t know if this will prove to be a painful but relatively short-lived episode of global distress or if we’re in this for the much longer haul. Will we look back on this as a defining moment of international cooperation to overcome one of the greatest health challenges […]
25th July 2020
Painting Her Majesty
Image ©Aliona Adrianova During my first meeting with Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Sir Simon McDonald in March 2019, when we discussed ideas for the portrait of The Queen that he wanted to commission, I was delighted to hear that he wanted it to feel intimate. He wanted to express Her Majesty’s humanity, rather than creating […]
7th July 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
Disarmament blog: what’s the point of the Conference on Disarmament?
The Conference on Disarmament resumed its 2020 session on Tuesday, after a break of 122 days. (We had been supposed to meet a week earlier, but technical problems with the new remote participation platform meant the meeting was cancelled at the eleventh hour.) But did anyone miss the CD while it was silent? Should it […]
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7th July 2020 Geneva, Switzerland
Blog: Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention goes virtual
It was with some trepidation that I turned up at the offices of the Geneva Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) for the Opening Session of the first ever virtual intersessional meetings of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention. Would the new platform, with its interpretation into the UN official languages, actually work? Would there be endless […]
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7th July 2020 Skopje, North Macedonia
Despite all the obstacles the fight for LGBTI equality continues
Last year, a Pride Parade took place in Skopje for the first time. The Parade was a protest and shall remain so until LGBTI people are able to enjoy all human rights and society is fully liberated. However, last year there were several reasons to celebrate. The Law on Prevention and Protection against Discrimination was […]
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3rd July 2020 Dublin, Ireland
Guest blog on UK-Ireland connections from Catherine Page, a deputy to Ambassador Robin Barnett
By endurance we conquer – what Shackleton can teach us today We have all had to find sources of inspiration to help us in the last few months. Mine came on one of many local lockdown walks in Dublin, when I passed a house with a plaque to “the Antarctic Explorer and Leader of Men”, […]
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3rd July 2020 Vienna, Austria
Online Q&A for UK nationals in Austria – Monday 6 July
UPDATE: The questions and answers (including those from Facebook) can be downloaded here. Do you have questions about how the UK’s exit from the EU affects you? The embassy is running an online Q&A session on Monday 6 July. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team here and colleagues in London have continued to work closely […]
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19th June 2020
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Digital Transformation in the Public Sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina
In the time of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, virtual reality, big data, and many more are now transforming societies, economies, institutions and businesses across the globe. Governments worldwide are strategically leveraging new technologies to fundamentally improve policies, decision-making, public services and systems. Yet the full potential of digital government […]
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15th June 2020
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
Cost of Youth Emigration
Long lines of people in front of foreign embassies in Sarajevo has become an all too common backdrop on our way to work. Migration is a fact of modern life, with both positive and negative elements. But there is something especially worrying about seeing so many young people in these lines, often accompanied by family […]