Diplomat makes history as first refugee to become a UK high commissioner

Kanbar Hossein-Bor outside the Foreign Office in Whitehall. He is the UK’s first high commissioner from a refugee background. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

“In her mind this was a bastion of the establishment, she was a little worried of rejection,” Kanbar Hossein-Bor said of his mother’s reaction, two decades ago, to the news he was applying to work in the UK Foreign Office.

This week, the fear that “he might not be British enough” was proved wrong, when Hossein-Bor was appointed as the UK’s high commissioner to Fiji – the first refugee to achieve the rank.