Tom Fletcher: Diplomacy in the digital age

You left the diplomatic service last year after serving as ambassador to Lebanon. What keeps you in the region?

I teach at the NYU Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi but at the moment I have been focusing on getting Syrian children back to school in September. We’re making much more progress than even I’d hoped at the beginning of the year. A lot of people are coming together to recognize that this is a first order challenge. There are one million Syrians out of school at the moment. I think we’re going to get almost every Syrian in Jordan into class next year. We’ll probably reach two-thirds of those in Lebanon and probably half to two-thirds of those in Turkey. Frustratingly, it’s very hard to get education to the displaced communities inside the country.