Cultural Diplomacy

Headlines explored the cultural highs and lows of fashion on the global stage. 

Diplomacy is stitched into the royal wardrobe - detail is key. Embroidery, for example, has highlighted relationships between nations and regions. Her coronation dress boasted British and Commonwealth emblems. When the Queen visited Ireland in 2011, her robe for the state banquet at Dublin Castle was embellished with more than 2,000 hand-sewn shamrocks. Color is more than a shade. Its symbolism may govern options. 

A Kazakh delegation headed by EXPO 2017 Commissioner Rapil Zhoshybayev travelled to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore during the first half of April. [...] The commissioner apprised them on the progress and practical preparations for the upcoming exhibition and highlighted a wide range of opportunities in the field of renewable and alternative energy.

President Barack Obama's decision not to attend the April 2 inauguration of a new mosque near Washington D.C. might have spoild the party a bit. The event was billed, after all, as the highlight of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent trip to the United States.

When Laurence Rossignol, France’s minister for women’s rights, likened women willingly wearing the burka to African-Americans backing slavery, she caused international controversy. […] She later apologized for the “language mistake” but she stands by her point, criticizing brands such as Marks and Spencer and H&M that are designing Islamic fashion.

Much of diplomacy happening between India and Pakistan is "cultural diplomacy", former foreign secretary Shyam Saran today said and credited Bollywood as one of the binding factors in forging people-to- people ties between the two countries. 

For years Kayan women and girls have been driven across the border by poverty and conflict to earn money posing in holidaymakers' pictures in purpose-built Thai villages decried by rights campaigners as "human zoos". Now several have returned to their remote native Panpet area in Kayah state, Myanmar, with an entrepreneurial plan to reverse the flow of departures [...] from decades of solitude.

"This is Dange Nwe Radio, refugee-to-refugee segment, from 8am to 12 noon, broadcast in Kurmanji and Arabic," a female broadcaster announces in a southern Iraqi accent. [...] The new refugee radio program on Dange Nwe (New Voice) Radio is staffed exclusively by Syrian and Iraqi women displaced by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the war in Syria.

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