Inside Geneva
SWI swissinfo.ch
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
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Narratives from the frontlines of human suffering
Inside Geneva
12/26/23 • 37 min
In the last Inside Geneva of 2023, UN correspondents look back at the year..and what a year it’s been.
Emma Farge, Reuters: ‘This year has felt like lurching from one catastrophe to another.’
Earthquakes, climate change, or war –the UN is always expected to step in.
Nick Cumming-Bruce, contributor, New York Times: ‘This is a multilateral system that is absolutely falling apart under the strain of all the extreme events it’s having to deal with.’
Aid agencies have struggled to cope.
Imogen Foulkes, host, Inside Geneva: ‘You feel like they’re being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed between the warring parties, and the Security Council which will just never agree.’
And now, war, again, in the middle east.
Dorian Burkhalter, Swissinfo: ‘The UN has never lost that many humanitarian workers, and just seeing their helplessness you can really tell that they’ve lost their protection, and they’re totally desperate.’
Emma Farge: ‘It’s been personal for everyone, and it;s been difficult for journalists to navigate this information war and to really navigate it with your composure.’
What will 2024 bring?
Nick Cumming-Bruce: ‘We still have potentially months of conflict, and we then have the whole issue of post conflict. Well, 2024 is really going to be where we see where the rubber hits the road on that one.’
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
01/23/24 • 31 min
The International Court of Justice (the United Nations’ top court) is considering charges of genocide against Israel. The case was brought by South Africa.
Adila Hassim, the lawyer for South Africa, says: “Palestinians are subjected to relentless bombing. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches and as they try to find food and water for their families."
Israel is defending itself with vigour.
“What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy people but to protect people, its people. In these circumstances there can hardly be a charge more false and more malevolent than the accusation against Israel of genocide,” says Tal Becker, a lawyer for Israel.
Inside Geneva asks if this is really a case for the UN’s top court.
Margaret Satterthwaite, UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers: “This is a case about asserting humanity, and in fact asserting law over war. The purpose of the UN is to prevent disputes from turning into armed conflict. [...] And the ICJ is there to help resolve disputes and to prevent war.”
Can that really work? Or will this high-profile case simply distract from other human rights violations?
“People feel like if you don't call it genocide then it's not serious and that's a mistake. Crimes against humanity are incredibly severe,” says Ken Roth of the Harvard Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy.
The ICJ’s final verdict will take years. There is no right of appeal, and member states are obliged to comply. But the ICJ has no power to enforce.
“There's not a UN police force running around making sure that states comply with their international law obligations,” concludes Satterthwaite.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast to learn more about the case.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
04/16/24 • 39 min
The 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, recalls: “She thought there was a good chance that the Interahamwe [militia] would find the kids, the children, and she said, ‘pray that they don’t hack them to death, pray that they shoot them’”.
Why was it not prevented?
“The paralysis of the UN system, the paralysis of all the major players to respond to what was pretty clearly a massive genocidal operation,” says Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister.
Senior diplomats worked to make the UN stronger in the face of atrocities.
“Instead of talking about the right to intervene, we talked about the responsibility to protect. There are some kinds of behaviour which are just inconceivably beyond the pale, whatever country we live in, and just do demand this response,” says Evans.
Has “responsibility to protect”, or R2P, worked?
“I don’t think there’s been significant progress. I would say actually that we went from perhaps a hope, an illusion that something would be done to actually not expecting anything at all now,” says Stokes.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
01/07/25 • 37 min
For our planet, each year brings new climate records, and they’re not good ones.
“We now know that 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record. At the same time, we have accumulated more CO2 than ever in the history of human life on Earth,” says Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization.
On Inside Geneva this week, we look at the damage from the perspective of United Nations (UN) aid agencies.
“Climate change is making us sick, and it’s making us sick because it’s increasing the possibility of having more infectious diseases and waterborne diseases like cholera. It’s also sometimes destroying the capacity to produce food,” says Maria Neira, Climate Change Director at the World Health Organization.
We also hear how aid agencies are trying to reduce their own carbon footprints.
“Anyone who’s in the field at the moment shouldn’t be using their own agency vehicles. We should be ride-sharing. We’ve got 6,000 vehicles. Why aren’t they electric? We’ve got 6,000 generators. Why aren’t they all solar-powered?” says Andrew Harper, Climate Change Advisor to the UN Refugee Agency.
It’s part of a local Geneva initiative called 2050 Today to encourage the city’s UN agencies, diplomatic missions and private enterprises to tackle climate change.
“In my small mission, we know that our contribution may be minor in comparison, but we also understand the power of collective movements. By sharing the 2050 Today tools with our other embassies throughout the world, we aim to reduce our emissions by 45% from our 2022 levels,” says Matthew Wilson, the Ambassador of Barbados to the UN in Geneva.
Sometimes great things start local – join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to find out how.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
11/12/24 • 31 min
This 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 situation with political prisoners in Russia today is no longer a crisis, it’s a catastrophe. We now have more political prisoners in Russia alone than there were in the whole of the Soviet Union, so that’s 15 countries put together,” says Vladimir Kara-Murza, a former political prisoner.
In Geneva, the Human Rights Council can order investigations – but will New York respond?
“There is Gaza, the situation in Sudan, Myanmar, Syria – so many conflicts and humanitarian disasters, and there’s an inability of member states to reach an agreement,” says Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at Human Rights Watch NGO.
The UN Security Council, dominated by the US, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France, can’t agree – so it’s paralysed.
“I do have moments where I perhaps would like to stand up in the middle of the chamber and say: ‘Hey, do something!’ But that’s not professional and I would lose my press pass,” says journalist Dawn Clancy.
The UN’s main role is upholding peace and security. Is New York failing?
“For peace and security, human rights are the core. Without human rights we cannot have peace or security,” says Katzarova.
Join host Imogen Foulkes for Inside Geneva – in New York!
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
Pandemics and power
Inside Geneva
04/28/20 • 31 min
Under the coronavirus pandemic, the relationship between leader and citizen has changed. World leaders have more power - in some cases, much more. Host Imogen Foulkes unpacks the implications with Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch and Meg Davis of Geneva's Graduate Institute.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
Baptism of fire for UN's new human rights chief
Inside Geneva
11/28/23 • 24 min
This week Inside Geneva sits down for the last in our series of exclusive interviews with UN human rights commissioners.
Volker Türk has a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that he was given at school more than 40 years ago. Growing up in his native Austria, he focused his mind on human rights.
"In light of the history of my own country, Holocaust, its own atrocities committed by Austrians during the Second World War, it was very formative for me to actually really say OK what has to happen in this world so that we come to this never again attitude," he told host Imogen Foulkes.
Today, there are 55 conflicts worldwide – not the best atmosphere to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the universal declaration. But Volker Türk has a compelling analogy of why it is still important.
"We actually have traffic regulations, and they exist because otherwise people would get killed. That's the same on the human rights front, and that's why the Universal Declaration of human rights is so important. Yes there are people who are violating traffic regulations, as there are people who violate human rights law, sometimes egregiously, as we see now. It doesn't mean that this takes away the fundamental centrality of the norms."
He also believes that if warring parties could really see the suffering they cause each other, peace might be easier to achieve.
"I was at the border to Gaza in Rafah, on north Sinai. I met Palestinian children, who had injuries that I have rarely seen in my life. Spine injuries, some of them couldn't even talk, because they were in such deep trauma and shock. I also met families of hostages, Israeli hostages and I saw their pain, and I can see that there is immense suffering out there and that suffering is created from humans to humans."
Is there anything to celebrate on this 75th anniversary? Perhaps not, but we can learn.
"We cannot afford just to stay in the present. We need to learn from our crisis today to make it better in the future, and I hope that if there's one single message that comes across: that the centrality of human rights has to be much more pronounced than ever before."
Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva to listen to the full episode.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
09/17/24 • 36 min
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.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
Special episode: A year of war in the Middle East
Inside Geneva
10/07/24 • 32 min
It’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, former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
How have the aid agencies coped?
“People tend to believe we can do things that we cannot do. We have no army. We have no weapons,” said Fabrizio Carboni, regional director for the Near and Middle East at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
How do they respond to critics who believe they should do more?
“If we could release them all we would do it as soon as possible. If we could visit them we would visit them. And at the same time it takes place in an environment which is Gaza,” added Carboni.
Why are we so quick to war, and so slow to peace?
“There’s a focus on the centrality of my pain, the pain my community feels and I feel, and I want the world to stand with me whoever I may be, and I demand it as a recognition of my suffering. But then the obvious question is, but how often do we, as individuals, side with others who are experiencing pain,” said al Hussein.
Join host Imogen Foulkes for this special episode of the Inside Geneva podcast.
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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
07/11/23 • 30 min
On Inside Geneva this week: part two of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imogen Foulkes talks to Mary Robinson, the second person to serve as UN Human Rights Commissioner. Even as a schoolgirl in Ireland, she was already passionate about human rights.
‘I was a bit of a bookworm, and I found a book with a photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That iconic photo.’
She became a campaigning lawyer, and then Ireland’s first female president, but still wanted to do more.
‘There was this office of High Commissioner which I was aware of. In fact, I'd seen some of its work in Rwanda, which had been very difficult work. All my knowledgeable friends said ‘you know Mary I wouldn't take that job’.’
Her time as Human Rights Commissioner was challenging.
‘I remember feeling to myself, I'm going to get on top of this somehow. This job is impossible, everything is very very difficult, it's extremely hard work but somehow I’m going to get on top of it. And it got better.’
‘Some governments were critical...’
‘Over and over again, I kept saying to myself ‘I represent the first three words of the charter of the United Nations: we the peoples. That's what I represent. Not the states.’
Today, her commitment is undimmed..
‘Human rights is the answer. We need to understand that everyone has these core human rights, that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. That this is who we are.’
Get in touch!
- Email us at [email protected]
- Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
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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FAQ
How many episodes does Inside Geneva have?
Inside Geneva currently has 147 episodes available.
What topics does Inside Geneva cover?
The podcast is about News, Culture, Podcasts, Social Sciences, Science, Travel and Politics.
What is the most popular episode on Inside Geneva?
The episode title 'Africa and Covid-19: What can be learned?' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Inside Geneva?
The average episode length on Inside Geneva is 33 minutes.
How often are episodes of Inside Geneva released?
Episodes of Inside Geneva are typically released every 14 days.
When was the first episode of Inside Geneva?
The first episode of Inside Geneva was released on Sep 7, 2019.
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