UK’s new free Press envoy... Amal Clooney
AWAY FROM THE CHAOS, HUNT SCHMOOZES WITH A-LIST
WITH MPs at each other’s throats over Brexit, Westminster is not a very fun place to be at present.
No surprise then that Jeremy Hunt seemed to be enjoying himself yesterday when he got away from Parliament to mix with Hollywood royalty.
The Foreign Secretary has appointed Amal Clooney as special envoy on media freedom for the Foreign Office.
And yesterday the glamorous international human rights lawyer – and wife of actor George Clooney – flew with Mr Hunt to northern France to launch a media freedom campaign.
After leaving from RAF Northolt, in north-west London, they appeared together at an event on the sidelines of the Group of Seven foreign ministers’ meeting in the resort of Dinard.
In her new role, Mrs Clooney will campaign for journalists’ rights and chair a panel of legal experts trying to find ways to prevent and reverse media abuses.
The 41-year-old mother-oftwo said: ‘Through my legal work defending journalists I have seen first-hand the ways in which reporters are being targeted and imprisoned in an effort to silence them and prevent a free media.
‘I welcome the UK Government’s focus on this issue at a time when journalists are being killed and imprisoned at record levels all over the world, and I look forward to working on new legal initiatives that can help to ensure a more effective international response.’
The announcement comes ahead of an international conference on media freedom, which will be held in the UK in July. The Foreign Office said that 2018 was the deadliest year for journalists worldwide, with 99 killed, 348 detained and 60 taken hostage by non-state groups.
Mrs Clooney has never worked as a journalist, but she has described her mother as a ‘lifelong journalist’ and her father-in-law as ‘veteran of the trade’.
The lawyer’s clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was arrested in Egypt on suspicion of fabricating news in 2013.
Mr Hunt is not the first foreign secretary to add a touch of stardust to his role.
In 2014, William Hague met actress Angelina Jolie to hold a high-profile summit about rape in war zones. The then foreign secretary was criticised for the four-day conference, which cost the taxpayer more than £5million.
He claimed it would help to eliminate the scourge of sexual violence during wartime, with delegates from 123 countries attending. Miss Jolie, a UN Special Envoy for Refugees, also visited war-torn Congo with Lord Hague.
Last year, the Tory peer leapt to the summit’s defence, claiming it had led the UN to pass Security Council resolutions on the issue.