Inside Geneva

Send us Fan Mail This week on Inside Geneva , host Imogen Foulkes looks at the race to become the next UN Secretary-General. Antonio Guterres will step down in just six weeks, but the UN Security Council cannot agree on his successor. "The whole process is so strange, completely untransparent," says Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch. He is concerned that some candidates for the UN&...

Send us Fan Mail In episode four of our series interviewing candidates for director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), we talk to Gevorg Tamamyan. This series is in partnership with the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Tamamyan is professor of paediatric oncology at Yerevan state medical university and he has spent his career treating children with cancer. In his...

Send us Fan Mail Inside Geneva has partnered with the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute to bring you exclusive interviews with the candidates for director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Who wants to lead our top public health body?  Maria Neira was a doctor for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as the genocide in Rwanda began. Now she is a WHO insider, serving as...

Send us Fan Mail Here is episode two of our series in partnership with the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, bringing you exclusive interviews with the candidates for director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Budi Sadikin is currently Indonesia’s health minister, but has spent most of his career in finance, as a top executive at Indonesia’s biggest bank. “Before...

Send us Fan Mail Inside Geneva has partnered with the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute to bring you exclusive interviews with the candidates for director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Who wants to lead our top public health body? Hanan Balkhy is currently regional director for the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean regional office, so she’s something of a WHO inside...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Inside Geneva, host Imogen Foulkes asks whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) can survive Washington’s brutal sanctions. James Goldston of Open Society tells us the sanctions mean a “financial death sentence” for the court’s judges and lawyers, who can no longer use credit cards and even US based systems like Microsoft.  Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watc...

Send us Fan Mail This week on our Inside Geneva podcast, we ask whether the world has forgotten women in Afghanistan.  Under Taliban rule, they cannot work, go to secondary school, leave the house alone or even visit a public park.  Human rights defenders say the world is looking away. Some argue that what’s happening in Afghanistan amounts to gender apartheid and want it recognised as a crime und...

Send us Fan Mail What takes a woman from a law career in Australia to Somalia, Afghanistan and then…Fiji?  On our Inside Geneva podcast, host Imogen Foulkes talks to UN Women’s Alison Davidian about being in Kabul when the Taliban returned and about the effects of climate change and rising sea levels on women’s livelihoods. They also discuss why men and boys should never feel threatened by gender...

Send us Fan Mail Diversity, equality, inclusion, woke: are these concepts now toxic? The past two years have seen a pushback against gender equality, and it is having real-world consequences for women and girls.  Yet in Geneva, the International Gender Champions, led by senior diplomats, are not giving up.  “I embrace wokeness,” one ambassador tells us. The data shows that equality benefits everyo...

Send us Fan Mail It’s been ten months since the ceasefire in Gaza. Almost a million people still live in tents. There are 60 million tonnes of rubble to clear. The UN estimates reconstruction will cost at least $70 billion. But the work has not started. Key building materials are being denied entry, there is little clean water, but many rats.  Inside Geneva talks to Jehan Salim and Mohammed al Akl...

Send us Fan Mail UN investigations have documented war crimes in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. So why is no one being held accountable? Why do some political leaders talk about human rights as though they were an optional nuisance?  In this episode of our ‘Inside Geneva’ podcast, we speak with Phil Lynch and Pooja Patel from the International Service for Human Rights. We discuss impunity, scapegoating,...

Send us Fan Mail Philippe Stoll, the Red Cross’s ‘techplomat’, is Inside Geneva’s Summer Profile this week. “I studied economics and I think I could have been a banker or something like that. A good Swiss indeed! But my mother was a volunteer at the Red Cross, and I think she influenced me a lot about maybe being human or taking care of humans,” he says.  He’s helping the International Committee o...

Send us Fan Mail Trish Newport of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Switzerland is Inside Geneva’s first summer profile this year. “My grandma was a humanitarian she had worked in Malawi and I remember when I was about 10 years old she said to me, ‘When you grow up and you become a humanitarian, you should work for MSF because they really have strong values and ethics that you will appreciate,’” says...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we look at the race to be the next UN Secretary-General. Is it time for a change? Susana Malcorra, candidate for UN Secretary-General 2016: 'I am deeply convinced this is a moment that requires a different type of leadership, and we have tested leadership nine leaders throughout 80 years that were all men.' Geneva recently hosted three of the...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Inside Geneva presents the newest instalment of our “Books to make you think” series. We talk to an author who had a ringside seat as the US development agency USAID was being destroyed. “The people who so recklessly tore down the agency [...] are still sitting in high government positions and have not been held accountable for their actions, so I intentionally named na...

Send us Fan Mail On our Inside Geneva podcast this week, we host a debate on a key question: what’s the point of foreign aid? “What’s the point of mobilising taxpayers’ money and sending it to faraway countries to assist vulnerable people? And how do you sell that to your own taxpayers?” says Gilles Carbonnier, former Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). There are...

Send us Fan Mail On this week's Inside Geneva podcast episode, we take stock of aid cuts and what they mean for new crises such as Ebola. “It is a catastrophe. It is not an opportunity. But now we have an obligation to transform the system: there’s no other way the humanitarian system can survive this crisis without any change,” says Professor Karl Blanchet from the University of Geneva. A ne...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva , we look at weapons contamination and the harm it causes. “We have at least one casualty every single day in Afghanistan – someone killed or injured –and it is most likely a child,” says Nick Pond, from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.  From old conflicts to new. “Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and billions of square metres of land are suspected to...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we mark Press Freedom Day. Is there anything to celebrate? Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression: “The role of journalists has never been under such pressure, and the sector itself is suffering. So these are very, very important times to take a deep breath and make sure that freedom of expression, and media freedom as part of that,...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we ask: in a world of violent conflict, is the UN – which was founded to keep the peace – doing its job? “On many fronts the UN is doing indispensable work every day, bringing food to hungry people and ensuring practical standards for how we cooperate on the planet. Most countries follow the UN’s rules and principles on an everyday basis, so not too bad...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week: who are the peacemakers? “Women are completely absent in high-level politics and from high-level peacemaking at the moment. However, this is only the visible part. Our focus has been so much on US President Donald Trump,” says Sara Hellmüller, professor of International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute.  Two peace experts, both women, give us...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we look at women fighting for justice. In 2017, Myanmar’s military launched an assault on the Rohingya population. Almost a million were displaced, there were reports of horrific violations: rape, the murder of children, including babies. “The accounts that affected me most are those of children. Now I’m a grandfather, I sit there and listen and I think...

Send us Fan Mail In August 2021, the Taliban took back control in Afghanistan. Women face unprecedented repression.  They can’t go to school or work; public parks are banned to them; they are not allowed to speak or sing too loudly. Are we turning away? “This is the time for the international community and for other countries, especially the EU, to step in and to make sure they respond to the cris...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we unpick the divisive topic of migration and asylum. Why are some countries closing their doors? “In Europe we are seeing one country after another erect barbed wire around their country and around a continent,” says Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. When does restricting immigration turn into human rights violation? “We...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, we take an in-depth look at US President Donald Trump’s new ‘Board of Peace’. Experts on conflict resolution are sceptical. “The US circulated an invitation to about 60 countries to join a new board of peace that would not just focus on Gaza but would instead be a global conflict prevention organisation, complete with a pre-baked charter that looks a bi...