Inside Geneva

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What does the Human Rights Council mean to victims of atrocities? Feb 22, 2022

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Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by human rights defenders and investigators.

Human rights advocates bring their testimonies of atrocities to the UN – often at great risk to themselves – because it often is their last and only hope.

“I survived, I was able to finally leave the country, but if I hadn’t been able to do that, I would have ended up in jail, or tortured in prison,” says Khin Ohmar, a human rights defender from Myanmar.

“The feeling is always there, that sense of risk. We’ve had journalists, trade union leaders, human rights defenders, currently in prison,” says Feliciano Reyna, a human rights advocate from Venezuela.

“My only son was murdered by Dallas policemen, he was only 25 years old, he was unarmed, and shot seven times,” says Collette Flanagan, founder and CEO of Mothers Against Police Brutality.

UN investigators collect evidence that national or international courts can use to convict rights offenders. They too, have to face disturbing situations.

“I still know that the Myanmar butchers who are responsible for what happened may never individually be brought to justice,” says Chris Sidoti, an international human rights consultant.

“Is this possible? How can human beings do such horrible things to other human beings,” says Ilaria Ciarla, a UN human rights officer on the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.

“The idea that somebody has listened to your story, and you have taken your case to the United Nations is incredibly important,” says Andrew Clapham, a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.

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For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/
Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

Cyber-attacks: what are the risks for aid agencies? Feb 08, 2022

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In January the ICRC was hacked, compromising the data of half a million vulnerable people. But how vulnerable are aid agencies themselves to cyber-attacks?

Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by cybersecurity and humanitarian experts.

“It’s an attack on people who are already living in the anxiety of being separated from their family members and their loved ones. It’s an attack on their dignity, it’s an attack on their privacy,” says Massimo Marelli, head of data protection at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The ICRC has had to take its Restoring Family Links website offline. Who would attack an aid agency, and why?

“We have at least four attacks per week on healthcare. These attacks are high gain, low risk because there is a huge rate of impunity,” says Stéphane Duguin, CEO of the CyberPeace Institute.

How can humanitarian agencies protect themselves?

“The ICRC is not any humanitarian organisation, they are the guardians of the Geneva Conventions, so an attack on them is something special,” says analyst Daniel Warner.

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Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en

War and humanitarian aid in the 21st century Jan 25, 2022

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Henry Dunant witnessed the horrors of the battle of Solferino in 1859. This gave birth to his vision for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the first Geneva Convention. But how relevant is his vision in the 21st century?

Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by humanitarian and international law experts.

“Outer space, cyberspace and information space. Warfare is dramatically spreading across three new surfaces,” says Hugo Slim, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Solferino 21, a book on the changing face of war and humanitarian work.

“The whole concept of humanitarianism, which was very religious at the time, has got to change, because the world has evolved since then,” says analyst Daniel Warner.

Do the laws of war still work?

“Instead of bringing help because of compassion, I think we should recognise that the victims of war have rights,” says Paola Gaeta, a professor of international law at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

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What does 2022 hold for Afghanistan? Jan 11, 2022

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Millions of Afghans have not been paid for months as foreign aid – which used to fund 75% of Afghanistan’s public spending – was frozen following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by humanitarian aid workers.
“You see girls being essentially sold, girls as young as six, seven, eight. You see children being sold into labour. Already, I’ve seen more malnourished children in the past three, four months than I’ve ever seen in Afghanistan,” says Vicki Aken, Afghanistan country director at the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
“Can the international community hold 39 million people hostage to the fact that they do not want to recognise the authorities that are now in place in Kabul and in Afghanistan,” asks Dominik Stillhart, director of operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
With the United Nations warning of famine, the ICRC has started paying healthcare workers directly. But can humanitarian aid alone support an entire country?
“No matter how much aid we deliver, we cannot have a country entirely dependent on the goods we bring into the country. It’s just impossible to deliver at that scale,” says Aken.
“If we want to save Afghanistan and the Afghan population, it is not just by giving money to humanitarian organisations,” adds Stillhart.

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2021: a crisis upon a crisis for humanitarian agencies Dec 28, 2021

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It’s been a tough year: Covid as well as crises in Afghanistan and in Myanmar, to name but three.
"You see the kind of populist rhetoric, and the xenophobia and racism and so on infecting what were supposedly advanced democracies," Rupert Colville of UN Human Rights tells host Imogen Foulkes.
Despite the grim events of the past year, Geneva-based aid agencies do have hopes for a better year ahead.
"I hope we can see a bit more empathy and compassion from the rest of the world," says Shabio Mantoo of the UN Refugee Agency.
They're joined in the show by regular political analyst, Daniel Warner.

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Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en

What happened in ‘International Geneva’ in 2021? Dec 14, 2021

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The Covid-19 pandemic, a Biden-Putin face-to-face summit and record humanitarian crises: Geneva-based journalists reflect on a busy year and offer a glimpse into the future.

Podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by fellow Geneva-based correspondents who work for international news outlets.

Covid-19 dominated the news for the second year in a row. As the world prepares to enter “Year Three” of the pandemic, the future remains uncertain.

“There is no real perspective on when this is going to end. We had this kind of summer of hope, and then Omicron [variant] comes along and we have this question: where are we going to be in 12 months’ time,” asks Nick Cumming-Bruce, a contributor to The New York Times.

All eyes were on Geneva in June when US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met in the Swiss city for a historic summit.

Questions still remain, however, about whether the US has delivered on its promised return to multilateralism.

“I didn’t see the loud and clear voice of the USA defending human rights at the Human Rights Council. They were there, but kind of shy,” says Gabriela Sotomayor, a correspondent for the Mexican magazine Proceso.

In the meantime, humanitarian needs in crisis-affected countries reached record highs this year.

“Geneva’s aid agencies are doing the best they can in these crises – perpetual crises,” says analyst Daniel Warner.

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Do we need a pandemic treaty? Nov 30, 2021

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Covid-19 has dominated our lives for almost two years. Vaccines have been developed in record time, yet nearly half the world’s population has not received a single dose. What has gone wrong?

Imogen Foulkes is joined in this podcast episode by global health and policy experts.

“How do you solve this in the longer term? You don’t want to be in this situation when this happens again. This could happen next month, if the wrong variant comes out,” says Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the director-general at the World Health Organization (WHO).

The new Omicron Covid variant now threatens to undo earlier progress. Do we need a global pandemic treaty?

“We have not managed to ensure equitable access. We have left decisions to narrow national interests and to commercial decision-making,” says Michelle Childs, head of policy and advocacy at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). “We need to be optimistic. We must be optimistic. It’s in everyone’s interest to get out of this pandemic,” says Federica Zamatto, a medical coordinator at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

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Do we need to decolonize aid? Nov 16, 2021

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Decolonization has become a buzzword of late, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the toppling of statues of figures tied to a nation's colonial past.
Humanitarian work is also being more closely scrutinized. What does it tell us about our colonial history?
Imogen Foulkes is joined in this episode by policy experts and aid workers.
"If we were to think of aid as a form of reparation, as a form of social justice for historical and continuing harm," says Lata Narayanaswamy of the Politics of Global Development faculty at Leeds University.
"Headquarters trusted me to come out and within 72 hours produce a document that will decide the expenditure of several million dollars. But never asked any of the people who have been day in, day out in that hospital," adds Tammam Aloudat of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute Geneva.

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COP26: Why the climate crisis is also a humanitarian crisis Nov 02, 2021

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The increase in extreme weather events worldwide is evidence that climate change is already impacting our lives. The hardest hit of the global population are people in developing countries. Host Imogen Foulkes puts the spotlight in this episode on what humanitarian agencies are expecting from leaders at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference taking place in Glasgow.
"Ninety per cent of the world's refugees originate from countries that are on the front lines of the climate emergency. There is a linkage," says Andrew Harper, special adviser on climate action with the United Nations Refugee Agency.
"We are collectively driving towards a cliff. There are many people who have already lost their lives at the bottom of that cliff in countries that are already two or three degrees warmer," says Gernot Laganda of the World Food Programme.
"The fact that Switzerland did not pass a law about CO2 indicates that it's the developed countries that have been more difficult to convince," says political analyst Daniel Warner.

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The SDGs: Can we solve all of the world's problems? Oct 21, 2021

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In 2015 the world set itself 17 very ambitious targets: the Sustainable Development Goals. To end hunger, eradicate poverty, ensure health and education for all.
But are the SDGs over ambitious? And who decides who is meeting them, and who is backsliding? These are just two of the questions that host Imogen Foulkes puts to:
Martin Gutmann, Editor of a multi-author research project on the history of the SDGs, and lecture at the Lucerne University of Applied Arts. Claire Somerville, Lecturer and Executive Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute Geneva. Frederic Perron-Welch, a Junior Visiting Fellow in International Law at the Graduate Institute, and Mukta Dhere, Alumna and Project Coordinator of the Advancing Development Goals Contest at the institute.
"If nothing else, the SDGs have given us a common vocabulary, and a common framework, and I think that is very powerful in its own right," says Gutmann.
"They are ambitious and clearly unachievable in terms of the framing of the wording in the targets. I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem," adds Somerville.
"If everyone is in the tent now, because the SDGs are universal, is everyone being held to the same standards?" asks Perron-Welch.
Dhere adds a note of optimism: "We all have this incessant desire to make this world a better place, and I think the SDGs are exactly the tools that we need to do that."
This episode was recorded on October 19 in front of a live audience at the Graduate Institute Geneva. The institute is a partner of SWI swissinfo.ch and the Inside Geneva podcast.

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