This event will examine how best to strengthen health systems in developing countries and the role the UK can play in supporting such initiatives.   The Government’s 2021 Integrated Review identified Global Health as one of its 12 strategic framework areas that will see a new British approach. Under the heading ‘Global Health’ it states that ‘we will work to strengthen global health security, including through the Prime Minister’s five-point plan to bolster ...

UK launch of the Safety of Journalists Platform 2022 Annual Report.   This event is being hosted by the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Safety of Journalists Platform, the mechanism which reports on serious threats to the safety of journalists and media freedom in Europe, and the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC). The event is the UK launch for the Safety of Journalists Platform’s 2022 Annual Report. The report examines the key ...

Last month, the UK Government launched a consultation to address SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation), highlighting the extent to which legal threats have become a key issue for media freedom in 2022. SLAPPs are brought by the powerful and wealthy, eager to avoid scrutiny, to intimidate journalists into either not publishing or removing information from the public domain and penalize them for critical reporting. The use of this tactic ...

In June 2021, the UK hosted the expanded G7 summit, including India, South Korea and Australia. There is speculation that this was a prelude to the creation of a ‘D10’, a new alignment of major democracies to uphold liberal values and a rules-based multilateralism and international order. India is undoubtedly a democracy but the quality of its liberal democratic credentials has been seriously questioned, most notably by the V-Dem Democracy ...

This event, co-organised by the Aston Centre for Europe (ACE) and the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) will explore the practice and scope of Britain’s new ‘paradiplomacy’ towards the EU in the wake of Brexit. It seeks to develop a stronger understanding of an effective multi-level engagement with the EU and European partners post-Brexit, and offers opportunities to compare and learn from best practices.   Across the world regions, cities and ...

This event, organised by the FPC and the SEPAD (Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation) project at the Richardson Institute for Peace at Lancaster University, aims to examine how ten years after the Arab Uprisings, the struggle between rulers and ruled continues to shape the contours of political life across the MENA region. Central to these struggles are questions about citizenship and its capacity to order political and social life through drawing ...

This webinar, held on International Anti-Corruption Day, will explore what can be done by the US, UK and other governments to push back against kleptocracy as well examine the ongoing challenges for journalists working to expose corruption facilitated through Western financial and legal systems.   Background Successive global journalistic investigations, including the recent Pandora Papers, have increasingly uncovered the extent of global ‘kleptocracy’. Political and business elites from countries with limited democratic ...

This virtual event will discuss the findings of an upcoming Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) and the Peaceful Change Initiative (PCi) publication. The event and publication seek to re-examine the UK’s presence in fragile and conflict affected countries (FCACs) around the world at a time of continuing global geopolitical competition and added fragilities generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of climate change. The publication will address the questions of ...

Fostering inclusive growth in order to ‘level up’ prosperity across the UK and reduce regional inequality has become an important policy agenda for the UK Government. There remain many questions, however, regarding how exactly this can be achieved. This Aston Centre for Europe and Foreign Policy Centre event seeks to extract lessons from the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain renowned for its inclusive economic transformation, and to share ...

This event, organised by the FPC and the SEPAD (Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation) project at the Richardson Institute for Peace at Lancaster University, aims to discuss the situation in both Lebanon and Yemen to analyse what is happening, what can be done to improve matters and what can be learned from these crises to help in other conflict and post-conflict situations. The event will examine what the situation in Lebanon ...