For 45 years, the UK has debated achieving the ODA target of 0.7% of GDP/GNI set out in UN General Assembly Resolution 2626 in 1970. In 2013, with cross-party agreement at last, the UK became the first of the G8 states to achieve that 0.7% target. And on Friday 12 September 2014 164 MP’s across…
Today is a big day in a big year. In 2015 the UN will celebrate the significant if incomplete success of the Millennium Development Goals and agree a new set of goals – the Sustainable Development Goals – as the engine for development over the next fifteen years. And today action2015 has been launched around the world to mobilise groups…
If the TV show Pointless asked contestants to name countries with UN peacekeeping missions then the Central African Republic would almost certainly be a ‘pointless’ answer: one that no-one was able to guess. Yet, in this country with a population smaller than Scotland (4.6 million) thousands were murdered, raped and mutilated at the end of…
Today we decide. It is a momentous day, and whatever we think of the campaigns, or the importance of the question, we will choose Scotland’s constitutional future in these next few hours. Inspired by a good friend who wrote quite a good list of his 10 top reasons for voting Yes, I thought the…
Last Tuesday was the 15th Anniversary of that amazing day when the first democratic Scottish Parliament was officially opened in 1999. It was a day I’ll never forget, so it seemed like the perfect moment to set out my views on the independence referendum that takes place here in September. I was joined by former…
