The Daphne Festival marks the fifth anniversary since the assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. When Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated in October 2017, she had 47 open libel cases against her, highlighting the pressure of legal threats against investigative journalists. In the five years since, movements have sprung up across Europe to tackle SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation) leading to the creation of an EU Anti-SLAPP Directive and a ...

  The Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), Justice for Journalists (JFJ) Foundation and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) are delighted to announce the second edition of their UK Anti-SLAPP Conference to be held on Monday 28th and Tuesday 29th November 2022, both online and in-person in London. Following a highly successful inaugural conference last November, which highlighted the issue of SLAPPs with the participation of more than 40 ...

This SEPAD project and the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) event and publication launch, Dividing Lines: Reimagining Social Division in ‘Divided Societies’, will bring together a range of experts to examine the similarities and differences across ‘divided societies’, using the concept of sectarianism to better understand efforts to address division across the world. It will explore the concept of sectarianism in peacebuilding and the resulting effects that have emerged from this process in ...

The SEPAD project and the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) are delighted to announce the Faith and State conference to be held on Tuesday 12th July in London. This conference will examine the importance of religious identities within the fabric of states in the Middle East. While a great deal of work has been undertaken looking at sectarian differences, comparatively little discussion of the ways in which people have rejected such identities, in ...

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 ...