Send us a textThis week Inside Geneva goes to New York. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly is hearing multiple reports of serious human rights violations.“I think it’s more difficult to get the human rights message [across] here in New York at the General Assembly. But hopefully we will be heard,” says Mariana Katzarova, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia.Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan are on the agenda. But so is the situation of human rights groups inside Russia.“The ...
Send us a textOn Inside Geneva this week we talk to the people behind a new book about life in Gaza, told through the words of those who live there. “People are actually travelling in the middle of a war, in the middle of Gaza at midnight – the peak of the risk, if you like – to get somewhere where they can get a better internet so they can actually talk to us,” says Mahmoud Muna, editor of Daybreak in Gaza. This book, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma an...
Send us a textThe presidential elections in the United States (US) are just a couple of weeks away. What will they mean for international affairs, for Ukraine, for the Middle East, for humanitarian work, for international law and for the United Nations (UN) in Geneva?“When I was in the US, I definitely saw that there is no interest for anything called multilateralism or collaboration globally. Because it’s a matter of support – political, financial and moral support for international question...
Send us a textIt’s been one year since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. Twelve months of violent conflict have followed, with tens of thousands dead. We look back at our coverage over the past year.“What we have to deal with is the immense stupidity of the wars that currently are in place. And here we are having to deal with wars of a sort that were better found in the history books devoted to the 20th century and ought not to have a place in the 21st,” said Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, for...
Send us a textFor 40 years, there has been an absolute ban on torture. But it still happens…“Horrific things can happen to you. Nobody is there to help you. Nobody is there to document it, etc. And I think sometimes we speak about torture without putting ourselves in the shoes of what this is,” says Gerald Staberock from the World Organisation Against Torture.On our Inside Geneva podcast this week, host Imogen Foulkes finds out how the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or De...
Send us a textThis month the United Nations (UN) will host the ‘Summit of the Future’ in New York. What's the point of this high-level event? Inside Geneva investigates.“The UN is not an entity that does anything. I mean, we can all blame it, but what is the UN? It’s just the sum of its parts: the governments,” says Christiane Oelrich, journalist for the DPA German Press Agency.Is the UN’s 1945 structure even fit for purpose?“Historically the UN for many people is still associated with the We...
Send us a textThe World Trade Organisation (WTO) Public Forum is underway in Geneva and its key theme is ‘re-globalisation’. Are we nervous of that word? Inside Geneva sat down with WTO officials to find out what it means.“Trade has been a very powerful force for reducing between-country inequality. Since 1995, for example, since the foundation of the WTO, extreme poverty in the world has been reduced from 40% to 10%, because of growth in many countries that was also export-led,” says Ralph O...
Send us a textConflict-related sexual violence has existed for as long as war itself – forever.“It is a weapon of war. I would say it’s a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximising harm,” says Esther Dingemans, Executive Director of the Global Survivors Fund.In Inside Geneva’s final summer profile, we talk to a woman working to support survivors of sexual violence…from Sudan, to Ukraine, to Syria, or Chad.“Young girls have been raped in front of their parents. Fathers are bound to ch...
Send us a textIt’s three years since the Taliban took back control in Afghanistan. Inside Geneva talks to an Afghan human rights defender.“I was scared and I could see it coming. Yes, I mean, I think for the women of Afghanistan, we knew that the Taliban taking over would mean a dark future for women,” says Fereshta Abbasi from Human Rights Watch.In three years, women’s rights have been steadily, and brutally, repressed.“No matter what we have done in the past three years, we haven’t been abl...
Send us a textJoin us for a special extra edition of Inside Geneva to mark World Humanitarian Day, with testimonies from aid workers who have given their all – and who have often lost a great deal.“So I had taken him to the airport together with our child, and, yes, it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him,” says Laura Dolci. Dolci’s young husband Jean-Selim was killed, just weeks after the birth of their son, in the bombing...
Send us a textIn the fourth episode of our summer profile series on Inside Geneva, we talk to a Geneva career woman and a Geneva asylum-seeker about a project to unite communities through sport. Surely the world’s humanitarian capital is good at welcoming refugees and immigrants?“We have all these international organisations working on various global challenges. But when you talk to people from Geneva, they don’t really know what’s happening in this bubble,” says Lena Menge, from the Geneva G...
Send us a textOn Inside Geneva, we bring you part three of our summer profile series. This week we talk to a doctor looking for treatments for some of the world’s most neglected diseases.“Neglect means that there are diseases that affect an important proportion of humanity but for which no new drugs have been developed because there is no money in it. Because they affect very poor populations in remote rural areas,” explains Olaf Valverde, clinical project leader at Drugs for Neglected Diseas...
Send us a textHere’s episode two of our summer profiles series on the Inside Geneva podcast. We talk to the head of one of the world’s leading humanitarian agencies. We start with his first assignment in Darfur, in western Sudan.“As I was one day building the shelter I realised for the first time in many years I hadn't thought of what’s next? I wasn’t thinking everyday where do I go from here, what do I do, what’s my plan? I’d just been so absorbed in the work,” Chris Lockyear, Secretary Gene...
Send us a textOn Inside Geneva, we’re bringing you a series of summer profiles, from doctors in war zones to researchers into the diseases that affect the world’s poorest.Today, we talk to international human rights lawyer Antonia Mulvey, who devotes herself to defending women.“With many of those that we work with, who have been subjected to sexual violence, part of it is listening to them, hearing them, acknowledging what has happened,” Mulvey says. From Somalia, to Sudan, or Lebanon, M...
Send us a textGeneva is the home of international law, the rules that are supposed to stop the worst violations in war. But does anyone respect it anymore? Please watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.Andrew Clapham, Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, says: “It’s quite blatant that when we like what the International Criminal Court is doing we will support it, but as soon as it steps out of line we will call it a ridiculous institution. So, it is a b...
Send us a textIn this week’s episode of our Inside Geneva podcast, we revisit our coverage of laws that changed the world. Save the Date for a live recordingWe’d like to invite you to a live recording session of our Inside Geneva podcast about the role of the Geneva Conventions and international law. Mark your calendars - June 5, 2024, from 12:30am to 13:30pm - at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Registration is required to secure your spot here. If you have any questions, please email us at ev...
Send us a textFour years ago, our lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. Countries locked down, millions became ill, millions died. And when the vaccine finally arrived, it was not fairly distributed. Rich countries bought too many, poor countries waited, with nothing. “What we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic was collapse. Basically, a complete failure of international cooperation,” says Suerie Moon of Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre. Surely we can do better?...
Send us a textIn the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, new, autonomous weapons are being used. Our Inside Geneva podcast asks whether we’re losing the race to control them – and the artificial intelligence systems that run them. “Autonomous weapons systems raise significant moral, ethical, and legal problems challenging human control over the use of force and handing over life-and-death decision-making to machines,” says Sai Bourothu, specialist in automated decision researc...
Send us a textThe world is marking 30 years since the Rwandan genocide. Inside Geneva talks to those who witnessed it. “We came to one village where there were a few survivors and a man came to me with a list and said ‘look, the names have been crossed out one by one, entire families, they were killing everybody from those families,’” says Christopher Stokes, from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Charles Petrie, former United Nations (UN) humanitarian coordinator,...
Send us a textIn Inside Geneva this week we get an eyewitness account of a mission to supply Gaza’s hospitals. Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. I don’t think so, I think what’s brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October, and who go back every day, to do it again and again and again.’ Aid agencies say nowhere is safe in Gaza Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘A woman with he...