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A podcast from SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland, where Imogen Foulkes puts big questions facing the world to the experts working to tackl
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This 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 West. And the question of including the global south still haunts the UN,” continues analyst Daniel Warner.
Does the UN have an answer to today’s brutal, intractable conflicts?
“Since World War Two there have been plenty of conflicts, but what we have seen in the last three or four or five years is the use of aggression and violence as an instrument of foreign policy. Yes, that’s right,” says Nick Cumming-Bruce, contributor for the New York Times.
Can more peaceful nations rescue the UN’s purpose?
“The fact that some countries follow the path of aggression doesn't mean that all the rest of the world has to talk about failure now,” adds Oelrich.
And is the summit a gamble for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres?
“We should tip a hat to Antonio Guterres for even trying to do this given all of the stuff that's going on,” says Imogen Foulkes, Inside Geneva presenter.
Join us on Inside Geneva to find out more about what we can expect from this summit.
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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
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The 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 Ossa, WTO chief economist.
Many ordinary people think global trade makes them poorer. How can it benefit them?
“At the WTO, our members have gotten together and many of them have formed a working group on trade and gender to especially put the lens of women to trade policy and to see what more can be done so that they can take advantage of opportunities,” says Johanna Hill, WTO Deputy Director.
The WTO doesn’t tell countries how to run their industries, but it does hope they can learn from one another.
“Perhaps one member might say, ‘Well, you know, supporting women in my country has really been a tremendous success. Because now we see higher growth rates, lower poverty rates and so on. Why don't you give it a try yourself?’” says Ossa.
Can global trade help us face global challenges?
“Nobody questions the importance of regulating to protect the environment or to protect health - everybody agrees on that. It’s the how that might be the question,” says Hill.
Join host Imogen Foulkes for a trade special on Inside Geneva.
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Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
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Conflict-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 chairs and forced to watch that. Or that an older – a woman in her 80s is raped in front of her son-in-law,” says Dingemans.
The 1949 Geneva Convention prohibits wartime rape and enforced prostitution. But even today there are few prosecutions. And what about the survivors?
“Survivors doubt themselves. Most victims of sexual violence will always question themselves. ‘Am I to blame?’” explains Dingemans.
The Global Survivors Fund works for reparation – not just money, but health care, counselling, and above all, recognition of the harm done.
“What is really important, particularly for survivors of sexual violence - which is often surrounded by so much shame and stigma - is that they are acknowledged, that harm has been done to them, and that it was not their fault,” concludes Dingemans.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.
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Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
Send us a text
It’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 able to reverse a single decree of the Taliban that is restricting women’s rights,” continues Abbasi.
“In 2024, Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where women do not have access to education beyond the sixth grade. Women do not have the right to most employment. Women do not have the right to freedom of movement. Women do not have the right to protest and assemble. So, I think we need to speak about it,” says Abbasi.
What can we do to support Afghan women?
“I think it’s very important to stand with them, to listen to them, and to amplify their voices. It’s very difficult to think of a better Afghanistan, a brighter future for women under Taliban rule. And I don’t want to think about that. I want to believe and hold my strength together, that this madness cannot last.”
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.
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Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
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Join 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 of the UN’s headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
Twenty years on, WHO cameraman Chris Black was sent to Gaza, to support, and document, medical care there.
“Something I really will never forget is a woman, with a young child, saying to me: ‘Are we safe here?’ And I wanted to say: ‘Yes, you're in the grounds of a hospital, under international humanitarian law this is a protected space, you should be safe here.’ But I couldn't say to her: ‘You're safe here,’” says Black.
More than 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
“People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. And 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,” continues Black.
“The aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper; ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being to the service of humanity,” says Dolci.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva for an inspiring listen.
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Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
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In 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 Graduate Institute and co-founder of Flag 21.
For asylum-seekers, arriving in a new country, even a safe one, can be hard.
“I was very lonely. It wasn’t easy. You feel lost and don’t really know what’s happening or where you are. It takes time to realise where you are and what you are supposed to do,” says Mahdie Alinejad, an asylum-seeker from Iran and a coach with Flag 21.
Flag 21 is a project that brings locals and asylum-seekers together – to run, swim, do yoga, and much more.
“Sport was actually a meaningful tool to include people in need, people that needed a community around them as well,” continues Menge.
The project benefits everyone.
“It’s not easy to have this confidence and grow in society as an immigrant. So this is a very good thing that they’re doing, giving opportunities to people who really need it, to find themselves, their space, their place and their confidence,” says Alinejad.
“They have such resilience and so much strength to share that you come away thinking ‘my God, my little problems are really nothing’,” concludes Menge.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to listen to the full interview.
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Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
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On 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 Diseases (DNDi).
Valverde is the clinical lead on a project looking for treatments for sleeping sickness.
“It’s a disease caused by a small parasite that almost always kills if untreated. During the first half of the 20th century there were huge epidemics. It not only destroyed communities but also caused the desertification of entire regions of Africa,” he adds.
Cases of sleeping sickness with no effective treatment had been rising again until DNDi began combing medical trials – some abandoned by big drug companies as not profitable – for other options. They found one promising lead and began testing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“The motivation, concentration and interest shown by our doctors in the DRC who were developing the clinical trial, were totally amazing. For them it was an opportunity to serve their people. And that was absolutely beautiful,” says Valverde.
The drug worked and sleeping sickness is on the way to being eradicated.
“I think this is what I always wanted to do; to do something that could be helpful to others. And this is what satisfies me. Just seeing that people have opportunities.”
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to listen to the full interview.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
Send us a text
Here’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 General of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told host Imogen Foulkes.
We also discuss the current crisis in Gaza, where, amid terrible destruction, MSF is providing medical care.
"What are we [on] now 37,000 people killed? It’s astonishing. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood after neighbourhood which has been completely flattened,” continues Lockyear.
In Gaza, MSF staff have met children as young as five, who said they wished to die.
“They've been going through this for months and months and months, and the brutality of what is happening, what they’re living through, yes, people are saying that they would rather end it than continue. And that can't be a surprise to us.”
MSF has been outspoken when it believes international law has been violated:
“What does it mean elsewhere? How could this be translated into other countries? Into Sudan, into the future if we can operate as a world with such impunity? Where does that leave us?” says Lockyear.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interview.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
Send us a text
On 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, Mulvey and her colleagues offer support and advice, but the women affected are always in control.
“Some have the courage and bravery to step forward, and we represent them in legal cases. But they have to lead the way,” she adds.
Mulvey also hopes to inspire other women.
“Let’s step up, let’s work with women, let’s work with women’s groups, to take more cases, to keep challenging it, to keep pushing that door open,” Mulvey concludes.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
Send us a text
Geneva 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 bit of a crossroads for international law.”
The Geneva Conventions are 75 years old – are young people even aware of them?
“We have the law, and at least my generation or younger generations tolerate much less those types of violations, and we are reporting more,” says Cristina Figueira Shah, international law student and co-President of the Human Rights, Conflict and Peace Initiative.
Are there any rules of war that work?
Laurent Gisel, Head of the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit at the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), explains that “far fewer people know about the prohibition of blinding laser weapons than the mine ban treaty. Why? Because it has been prohibited before they were developed. And it was prohibited 50 years ago.”
Does indicting a political leader achieve more than headlines?
“Naming somebody as a potential war criminal has a huge effect because if the leader is named as a war criminal, like President Putin or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that means that assisting them to do what they are doing means that you are aiding and assisting, potentially, in a war crime,” says Clapham.
How can we encourage more respect?
“I think we should go back and understand all the reasons why we got to this point in the first place. How we wrote all the international treaties and understand from that what our generation can do to improve it,” says Shah.
“Violation of international humanitarian law creates even more hatred. And if you want to live in peace afterwards, it helps to respect international humanitarian law during the conflict,” says Gisel.
Join Imogen Foulkes for an Inside Geneva special from Geneva’s Graduate Institute where experts and audience ask: “Is international law dead”?
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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
The podcast currently has 130 episodes available.
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