Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour: FIA Honorary Secretary Awarded Falkland Islands Honour
t is with great pride that the Falkland Islands Association (FIA) can announce on this Falkland Day (14 August) that our Honorary Secretary, Colin Wright, has been awarded the Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour for his ten years of service to the Association and the Falkland Islands.
The Queen’s Certificate and Badge of Honour recognises people with connections to the Falkland Islands “who have, by their loyalty and meritorious conduct, provided services of exceptional benefit to the people of the Falkland Islands”. The award was first introduced to the Falkland Islands in 2010, although it had long been granted by HM the Queen in many other UK Overseas Territories. The honour is awarded by the Governor on the advice of the Executive Council of the Falkland Islands Government and is usually announced on 14 August, Falkland Day, which commemorates the first recorded sighting of the Falkland Islands.
Colin Wright has served as FIA Honorary Secretary since 2005 and, in his quiet and unassuming way, has been crucial to the success of the Association in that period. The FIA’s main purpose is to support the Falkland Islanders’ right to self-determination and to help to counter Argentine propaganda in advancing its illegitimate sovereignty claim. It also seeks to show how the Falkland Islands have developed in socio-economic terms since the 1982 conflict and to correct misconceptions about the Islanders’ way of life and political aspirations to remain as a British Overseas Territory. Colin has been influential in overseeing the production of the bi-annual FIA Newsletter and the development of the FIA website as well as maintaining a substantial membership base. Highlights of his term of office have included the attendance of Baroness Thatcher at the Battle Day ceremony in 2007, the memorial service at St. Clement Danes for Sir Rex Hunt in 2012, and the memorial service in St. Martin-in-the-Fields on the centenary of the First World War battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands in 2014.
The other recipient of the award this year is Antonio Cordero Otero for his long service in the Falkland Islands as the representative of the Spanish fishing industry operating in Falkland Islands waters.
