DIPLO Blog

Skip to content Matt Field British Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina 15th June 2020 Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 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 posiitve and negative elements. But there is something especially worrying about seeing so many young people in these lines, often accompanied by family members, awaiting work permits. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, funded by the UK Government, has recently published the first study that examines how much does youth emigration cost this country, and the Western Balkan region. The findings of the study are alarming, and make a clear, fact-based case that the time to act is now. We do not believe that people of Bosnia and Herzegovina need to be told that the country is slowly but surely emptying. Accurate figures are often hard to find, but bet..

Skip to content Leigh Turner Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna Part of UK in Austria 15th June 2020 Vienna, Austria Making face masks and jobs in Grimsby “Two months ago this was just an empty warehouse”, the project manager says. We are entering a building adjacent to the Vienna HQ of Austrian company Hygiene Austria, south of Vienna. Inside, after donning face masks and spraying sanitiser on our hands, we find a hive of activity. Workers in sterile gowns operate high tech machines. They are making 12 million type-IIR, mouth-nose masks and FFP2 masks a month in Austria for medical and general use, including special masks for children in a range of appealing colours. As of 15 June they are also manufacturing 10 million face masks a month according to European and British standards in the United Kingdom, in the northern English coastal town of Grimsby. As the COVID-19 pandemic led to global shorta..

Skip to content Aidan Liddle UK Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament Part of Conference on Disarmament 11th June 2020 Geneva, Switzerland Disarmament blog: Disarmament and the Pandemic I last blogged in late February on the P5 Conference in London, looking ahead to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in April. The coronavirus outbreak in China was on our minds, of course, but none of us knew then how it would affect the rest of the world. Switzerland reported its first death from the disease on 5 March. The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March, and Switzerland imposed a lockdown a couple of days later. The human toll from the disease has been horrific. The economic, social and political implications will be immense, though it will take some time to understand them fully. My colleagues here dealing with the WHO, the humanitarian agencies, and the economic and human rights aspects of the crisis have been at ..

Skip to content Mikael Allan Mikaelsson PhD, Science and Innovation Policy Advisor, Europe Head of Clean Growth & Climate Change 7th June 2020 Stockholm, Sweden The Transboundary Risks of Climate Change “The aggregation of national interest does not amount to the global interest of the planet” – Youssef Nassef, Director of Adaptation at the UNFCCC In line with the UK Government’s climate diplomacy pillar around “Climate Change Has No Borders” as part of its presidency to the United Nations 26th Conference of the Parties, the UK Foreign Office’s international science and innovation network joins forces with UK and European partners to bring transboundary climate risk to the spotlight. There is a strong interplay and synergy between the threats that humanity faces from the Covid-19 and climate change emergencies, and the commonalities between the two are great, as are parallels to be drawn. Covid-19 and climate change threats are both environmental in origin and are global health crise..

Skip to content Caron Röhsler British High Commissioner to Maldives Part of UK in Maldives 7th June 2020 Maldives Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean: Maldives & the Nekton Mission Were it not for covid, for World Oceans Day this year I’d have been writing about early reports from the Nekton Mission’s First Descent in Maldives, following their exploration of sites around Addu Atoll, the Zero Degree Channel and Gnaviyani Atoll. This ambitious expedition to “the Midnight Zone” of the Indian Ocean (the least explored ocean in the world) should have completed its field research by now. The team would have been chomping through terabytes of data at their Oxford base, just as they did after their expedition to Seychelles which I also had the thrill of witnessing, in 2019. The theme of this year’s World Oceans Day is “Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean”. What distinguishes Nekton from other deep sea expeditions is a commitment to innovation in both scientific method and sustainable developmen..

Skip to content Chris Trott UK Ambassador to South Sudan Part of UK in South Sudan 4th June 2020 Juba, South Sudan When it comes to vaccines and access to healthcare we must think and act beyond COVID-19Today the UK is hosting the Global Vaccine Summit to raise money and awareness for Gavi, the vaccine alliance. Gavi is key in the global and local COVID-19 response, supporting countries to invest in preparedness and response, working with global partners on a vaccine, and ensuring that when a vaccine is available, all countries can access it. The immediate and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be devastating in South Sudan where 7.5 million people already need humanitarian assistance. During this global pandemic we are reminded that work on vaccines is more important than ever. However, it is critical that we continue to prioritise healthcare and vaccines beyond the scope of COVID-19. The World Health Organisation, UNICEF and Gavi have recently released fresh global warn..

Skip to content Leigh Turner Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna Part of UK in Austria 3rd June 2020 Vienna, Austria Cycling in Vienna: diplomatic, healthy and green The freshly oiled crank purrs like a sewing machine. The sun has come out from behind the clouds, casting a silverish gleam on the Danube. There is a mild breeze. Hundreds of people are cycling on Vienna’s 21 kilometre-long Danube island and I am one of them. To me this is pure happiness. Cycling is one of the most popular leisure activities worldwide. For many people it is also an efficient, healthy and green means of transport. In the UK, perhaps inspired by some remarkable elite sporting achievements (a British rider won the prestigious Tour de France in six out of the last eight years and the UK has won 19 Olympic gold medals in cycling since Beijing 2008), cycling popularity has increased steadily. According to the British Departm..

Skip to content Robin Barnett Ambassador to Ireland, Dublin Part of Brexit 2nd June 2020 Dublin, Ireland A week in the life of Robin Barnett Many people have asked me how an Embassy can operate virtually. After all, diplomacy is something of a contact sport. The answer lies in a combination of good IT, a great team, lots of imagination and creativity, a network of contacts, a lot of hard work and, crucially, by recharging your mobile phone at every opportunity! Let me give you a practical example. The publication of the UK’s approach to the Ireland / Northern Ireland Protocol last Wednesday made for a busy day for me and colleagues in Dublin as well as London, Belfast, Brussels and elsewhere. But the preparation had begun much earlier. Like most organisations, the British Civil Service has relied heavily on e-mail exchanges and face to face meetings when doing business. But preparing for and gathering reactions to the launch of our paper required a variety of secure technical solution..

Skip to content Caron Röhsler British High Commissioner to Maldives Part of UK in Maldives 30th May 2020 Maldives Meeting Maldives Before I came to Maldives, my non-resident predecessor told me that being the first resident UK Ambassador* to Maldives would provide a great opportunity to get out to islands that diplomats hadn’t reached in many a year. In my previous posting, in Seychelles, I’d been limited to a small number of affordable islands. So I made it my plan — once I had set up the new office and recruited a team — to get to as many of the 1,200 Maldivian islands as possible. Then C-19 darkened our doors. It’s not easy getting to know a country when you’re confined to a flat on an island you can run around in under an hour. But, as John Donne wrote in 1624, “no man is an island entire of itself”. The spiritual connections he wrote about back then have since been augmented with technological ones. Working from home in MaldivesSo, the other week, I found myself on a virtual odys..

Skip to content Leigh Turner Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna Part of UK in Austria 27th May 2020 Vienna, Austria How “The adjoining house at the Lustig Prean Gasse” became the British Embassy “The Ministry of Works may have ideas about office accommodation. I doubt whether it would be possible to extend the existing offices by building in the courtyard. Failing this, it might be possible to secure the adjoining house in the Lustig Prean Gasse (No.10), which is now divided into flats and which would be sufficiently large to accommodate all the services and the Consulate.” We have recently published two blogs about our estate in Vienna. One considers how repeated changes in the name of the street on which the British Embassy is located, the Jaurésgasse, reflect Austria’s 20th Century history. A second explores how the historic 1875 residence was recovered from the National Socialist Flying Corps,..