Back in 2017, the Trump administration announced that the United States would formally leave UNESCO, the UN's education, science and cultural organization. When the Biden administration came to office it promised to reverse course and rejoin UNESCO.  On June 12 this year it announced a plan to do just that.  Joining me to discuss America's complicated relationship with UNESCO and explain why the Biden administration is seeking to rejoin is Peter Yeo, President of the Better World Campaign and Senior Vice President at the United Nations Foundation.  We kick off discussing what exactly UNESCO does and how it supports American interests before having a longer conversation about this recent frought history between UNESCO and the US. Peter Yeo then explains the process by which the Biden administration is seeking to rejoin UNESCO. 

Why The United States is Rejoining UNESCO

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For humanitarian professionals, people whose job it is to deliver aid in conflict and disaster zones, Gaza is unique. Unlike other crises that suffer from lack of attention, the situation in Gaza is a top priority for governments around the world. Accordingly, there is no shortage of aid available to stem the crisis, which in some parts of Gaza has crossed the famine threshold. Rather, it is distributing the aid that has become the challenge, both in terms of getting the aid through Israeli inspections and, once in Gaza, getting the aid to where people need it most. My guest today, Jeremy Konyndyke, is the President of Refugees International and a veteran humanitarian professional who served as head of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 2013-2017. We kick off discussing why humanitarian groups, the United Nations, and the Biden administration are so concerned about a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah in southern Gaza. We then discuss the propriety of a humanitarian pier the US is constructing off the coast of Gaza and why the crisis in Gaza is so different from other humanitarian crises around the world. We conclude our conversation with an important discussion of the crisis in Darfur, and specifically the complicity of the United Arab Emirates in supporting a genocidal paramilitary.

Why Can't More Humanitarian Aid Get to Gaza?

Thousands of delegates gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, last week for the UN Civil Society Conference. The gathering was dedicated to the upcoming Summit of the Future, a major UN conference in September intended to reform and revitalize the UN and the multilateral system. The Nairobi civil society conference was an important opportunity for advocates, the NGO community, and other interested parties to help shape the outcome of the Summit of the Future. On the line to discuss with me what happened at the Nairobi conference and to explain more broadly the role of civil society as we approach the Summit of the Future is Lili Nkunzimana, United Nations representative at the Baha'i International Community's New York Office. We also discuss the current state of play of the intergovernmental negotiations over the Pact for the Future, which is the outcome document for September's summit. Today’s episode is produced in partnership with the Baha’i International Community, an NGO that represents the worldwide Baha’i community at the UN and other international forums, where it says that recognizing humanity’s interconnectedness is key to a shared global future. This episode is part of a series on the Summit of the Future. The previous episode in this series was published in January and can be found on http://www.GlobalDispatches.org. NB. “The inputs for the New Agenda for Peace were in December 2022, not December 2023 as stated int he episode."  

How Civil Society is Contributing to the UN's Summit of the Future

Each year, the United Nations Development Program produces the Human Development Report. This is a compilation of country-level data around education, health, and economic security that aspires to give a more holistic understanding of a country's development beyond economic indicators alone. UNDP has been putting this Human Development Report together for decades, and while some countries would sometimes register advances or declines in the so-called Human Development Index, the global trend was always one of unrelenting progress. Until COVID. The COVID years resulted in global declines along the human development indicators for reasons explained by my guest today, Pedro Conceicao, Director of the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Program. As Pedro Conceicao explains, the most recent report shows that, globally, the Human Development Index is registering progress, but that progress is not as sharp as it was prior to COVID. We discuss this trend and much more about the Human Development Report.

Why Human Development is Flatlining

This is a special preview of the Inside Geneva podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.   Recently UNWRA, the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians, has been facing scrutiny of what exactly their role is in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. Many people around the world hadn’t heard of UNRWA before this conflict - so what is it exactly, why was it founded, and does it need to continue? Journalist Imogen Foulkes takes a deep dive, talking to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, Israeli diplomat Nina Ben-Ami, Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch. Inside Geneva is produced by Swissinfo,  a multilingual public service media based in Switzerland.  

What’s the future of UNRWA? The Struggle for Balance in Gaza’s Aid Operations | Inside Geneva

El Fasher is the largest city in Sudan's Darfur region. It is also one of the few major cities in Darfur that has not fallen to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) during the civil war that broke out last year. However, an attack on El Fasher seems imminent. The RSF has surrounded the city and is laying siege to it. The United States, the United Nations, and key players around the world are urging against this impending attack, but it's unclear whether the RSF will be deterred. There are deep concerns for the fate of at least 800,000 people trapped in El Fasher, given that the RSF is a genocidal militia. The RSF is the re-branded Janjaweed Militia, which carried out the Darfur genocide 20 years ago. Since the full-scale civil war in Sudan began in April 2023, the RSF has reprised many of its genocidal tactics, targeting non-Arab ethnicities in Darfur for annihilation. My guest today is Mutasim Ali, Legal Advisor at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. The Wallenberg Centre recently published a report compiling evidence that genocide is ongoing in Darfur, with the RSF perpetrating it against non-Arab groups. We discuss at length how they came to this conclusion. Mutasim Ali is also from El Fasher, so we talk about the looming RSF assault on the city and what, if anything, can be done to prevent this attack. Sudan represents the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. This episode is part of our ongoing series on the atrocities in Darfur and the civil war in Sudan, which is receiving scant media attention despite the sheer scale of this ongoing calamity. Please support our work by becomming a paying supporter of the show: https://www.globaldispatches.org/ 

Why The United States is Rejoining UNESCO

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