Awake At Night

"It was a Close Protection Officer...who heard me. Had I not decided to knock exactly at that point in time, they would have repaired the backhoe [and] started to dig. They would've destabilised the area over which I was lying and I would not be sitting here today."   It's been over ten years since Senior Civil Affairs Officer, Jens Kristensen found himself trapped in the earthquake that hit Haiti...

"When it comes to a pandemic, it really needs global collaboration and solidarity because the pathogens and viruses do not respect borders." Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), shares her insights on how lessons from other infectious diseases like tuberculosis and HIV have shaped our response to the current pandemic. The clinical scientist also discusses...

"Genocide is a human creation so there has to be a human solution to it. What the world hasn't learned is what to do about the response….The early warning is there [...] but response is extremely poor. For 'never again' to work, we need to invest energy in addressing the foundations that produce the people who end up becoming genociders."   Alice Nderitu, the Secretary General's Special Advisor on...

"We all need to be convinced that we don't have a plan B. We only have one plan. And that one plan is to correct how we do business around our food systems and what our environment can handle. Our planet can take care of itself. It will eject us and move on. But is that where we want to be?"   Dr. Agnes Kalibata, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy to the 2021 Food Systems Summit, shares her...

This week's guest is Jean-Nicolas Beuze, the Representative of the UN Refugee Agency in Yemen - a country where two-thirds of the population relies on our humanitarian assistance for their daily survival. Beuze discusses the disparity between the Western world's outlook and the harsh realities most of the Yemeni people face " The Western world worries about the coronavirus. Yemen cannot even affor...

This week's guest is Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, which she describes as 'the environmental conscience' of the world. She calls for bold action as she warns climate change poses an existential threat far greater than COVID-19 and, unstopped, "will change the very foundation of our existence as we know it." "When we respect nature, and our planet, we...

This week's guest is Sarah Copland. Sarah is a UN Officer working on women's rights and gender equality. On August 4th 2020, Sarah was living and working in Beirut and preparing for the arrival of her second child. Tragically, she and her family were caught in the vast explosion that caused devastation across Beirut, and Sarah's young son Isaac was killed. Trying to understand her grief, Sarah sta...

My guest this episode is Richard Ragan, the Country Director of the World Food Programme in Bangladesh. Richard says a sense of adventure drew him to working for the UN, and his career has taken him all over the globe - including to North Korea, and to Liberia to coordinate the emergency response to Ebola. A keen outdoor sportsman, Richard never misses the chance to surf or climb wherever he is, a...

This week's guest is Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, which delivers education in humanitarian crises through funding investments for UN agencies and civil society organizations. Yasmine describes herself as a pragmatic idealist, who was taught by her mother not to look for success in life, but to seek to serve. Before her current role Yasmine worked for UNHCR resettling refugees...

This week's guest is Martin Griffiths, the Secretary General's Special Envoy for Yemen, a country that's been devastated by civil war. Martin's job is to try to keep open routes to negotiation between the warring parties. He says a mediator has to bring hope to seemingly hopeless situations. Martin speaks candidly about his struggles with depression, the mental toll humanitarian work can have, and...

This week's guest is Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Filippo is recovering from Covid-19, and says it's given him a sense of the fragility of life, especially for refugees and displaced people. Filippo says that feeling motivates him in his work, and his constant concern is to do everything possible to support those in need. "What keeps me awake at night in gener...

Funmi Balogun is the head of Humanitarian Action at UN Women, supporting some of the world's most vulnerable women and girls - people who are displaced or refugees. She works to make sure that the humanitarian response does not perpetuate gender inequality. Funmi's upbringing in Nigeria spurred her to fight against gender inequality   - it's something she has experienced in her own community. The...

Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is working to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. "You really see… how important it is to have peace in the home and the ability for girl child in particular to be able to scream at the top of her lungs if she feels that somethi...

Mark Lowcock leads global humanitarian relief efforts for the UN. Mark's optimism has sustained him throughout his 30-year career delivering aid to people suffering from war, poverty and famine. "One of the things I hold on to is most people on the planet have escaped from those problems, as the generations have passed. And when you're confronting the next bleak, horrible event, holding on to the...

"... There is a better understanding that the health of people and the health of economies are tightly linked. So we can do much more now, make more progress on health, because this relationship is better understood. We should take hope from that and fight more on the issues of equality, reducing inequalities in health and giving everybody their right to health." Winnie Byanyima recently became th...

As we mark five years after Europe's refugee crisis, we revisit our episode with Boris Cheshirkov, who worked for UNHCR as a spokesperson in his native Bulgaria when thousands of refugees were arriving at the border. It was an extremely tense time, testing European solidarity to its limits - bringing out the best of humanity and also the worst. Anti-refugee feeling was running high. In Bulgaria, a...

Marie-Roseline Bélizaire is a doctor and epidemiologist with the World Health Organization (WHO). She was on the frontlines of Ebola and is now turning her expertise to help fight the spread of COVID-19 in the Central African Republic (CAR). She was motivated to study medicine after both her parents died from unexamined causes in their community in Haiti. Now, she goes door to door in CAR implemen...

Zainab Hawa Bangura is the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) and worries for the health and safety of her staff and the populations they serve in the face COVID-19. Zainab began her career as a women's rights campaigner in her home country of Sierra Leone. Her reasons were personal: at age 12, her father, an Imam, wanted to marry her off to an older man. Her mother re...

Mike Ryan, Executive Director of The Health Emergencies Programme for the World Health Organization (WHO), is leading the team responding to the international containment and treatment of COVID-19. He tells Melissa Fleming how he had to give up on dreams of becoming a trauma surgeon, after he broke his spine in a car crash in Iraq. He was held hostage there while working in an Iraqi hospital durin...

Matshidiso Moeti is the first female Regional Director for Africa for the World Health Organization (WHO). Now she's the face of the COVID-19 fight in Africa, but she says facing the pandemic is easier than where she started her career as a doctor - fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s.   Now, she says, we're willing to talk about inequalities and tackle stigma about d...

In this episode, host Melissa Fleming speaks with Neil Walsh, Chief of Cybercrime and Anti-Money Laundering for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. He describes the horrific surge of criminals exploiting and abusing children online while they are in lock-down and what he is doing to stop it. He speaks about his belief that "COVID-19 is the great reset button." He also describes the scene he witnesse...

In this opening episode for Season 3 of Awake at Night, host Melissa Fleming speaks with David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), about his own experience being sick with COVID-19 and why people should listen to the science.  He also explains why the pandemic is causing an spiraling epidemic of hunger.  In Mr. Beasley's words, should the world fail to com...

How are health workers, humanitarians and peacekeepers racing to protect the world's most vulnerable populations from the impact of the COVID-19 virus? In Season 3 of Awake at Night, host Melissa Fleming speaks with some of her remarkable colleagues at the United Nations about what drives them to help.

Adiba Qasim is from the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. In August 2014, her village was stormed by Islamic State militants who killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis. Adiba and her family managed to escape just before the militants arrived. She was 19 years old. " At 7:00 in the morning, relatives called my father and said: 'We are now coming to the North, because the Islamic State are 3:00 in...

For the season 2 finale of UNHCR's podcast series, the actor and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett talks about what keeps her Awake at Night . Describing her experience of working with UNHCR and meeting refugees as "one of the great privileges of my life", Blanchett reflects on how it has profoundly altered her perception of human suffering and the capacity to hope.