Inside Geneva

Send us Fan Mail 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 atr...

Send us Fan Mail Geneva recently hosted the Peace Week annual forum. Inside Geneva asks what’s the point, especially when there seems to be so much conflict still going on. “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 n...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week: part six of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imogen Foulkes talks to Michelle Bachelet, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2018 to 2022. She was a young woman during Chile’s military dictatorship, and experienced human rights violations first hand. “You needed to be as strong as possible,...

Send us Fan Mail The current conflict in the Middle East is the most violent in decades. An Inside Geneva special asks what the rules of law allow, and what they forbid.  Marco Sassòli, Professor of International Law at the University of Geneva, says: “the massacre Hamas committed among those festival visitors are clear violations of international humanitarian law. [...] The entire northern Gaza S...

Send us Fan Mail It’s more than a year and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine. The war shows no sign of ending, and Moscow is cracking down on all opposition.  This week, Inside Geneva asks how we can support human rights inside Russia. "Since the full scale invasion of Ukraine had been launched in February of last year, the regime has brought back the entire arsenal of Soviet style repressi...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week: part five of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Imogen Foulkes talks to Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2014 to 2018.  He became the first Asian, Muslim and Arab to hold the position. But did he plan a career in human rights from an early age? "No, I was far...

Send us Fan Mail Inside Geneva is marking its 100th podcast episode this week. In this episode host Imogen Foulkes looks back at some of the podcast highlights. This episode starts with an assessment of how humanitarians coped with the war in Syria.  Jan Egeland, former head of the United Nations humanitarian taskforce for Syria says: "Syria was a real setback where these besiegements, the bo...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week: part four of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Imogen Foulkes talks to Navi Pillay, she served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2008 to 2014, she started life in racially segregated South Africa.   "We grew up under apartheid and we’re realised there’s something very unfair here. Our teachers...

Send us Fan Mail August marks two important days in the humanitarian calendar  First, the International day of the disappeared. Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC: ‘I look at my kids, I look at my family, and I say ‘imagine now there is a frontline between us and my son, my brother, my mother, my father, are captured and I can't see them for a year, two, three, four.’’   Inside Geneva hears how the ICRC...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week: part three of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Host Imogen Foulkes talks to Louise Arbour, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. She arrived in Geneva with a formidable track record. As a prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, she had indicted Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes....

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week we take a deep dive into the pros and cons of artificial intelligence. Should the United Nations (UN) help to regulate it? Could it even do that? Across the UN there are different views.  Tomas Lamanauskas, deputy secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) says that "the technology in itself has a huge potential to help us...

Send us Fan Mail 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 R...

Send us Fan Mail On Inside Geneva this week, host Imogen Foulkes asks if the United Nations (UN) should still work in Afghanistan, now the Taliban are banning women from work, and girls from secondary school?  Karima Bennoune, professor of International Law: ‘Anyone who believed in something called Taliban 2.0, had never actually spoken to an Afghan woman human rights defender. Because the Afghan...

Send us Fan Mail This week Inside Geneva starts a new series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Born out of the terrible cruelty of World War II, millions hoped the declaration would prevent atrocities.  "This Universal Declaration of human rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere," said Eleanor Roosevelt.  But the...

Send us Fan Mail Inside Geneva was at the World Health Assembly over the last week, finding out what lessons are being learned from Covid-19 now that the WHO says the global health emergency is over – even if the pandemic isn’t.  Suerie Moon, co-director, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute said: "Every single country is vulnerable to pandemics. Every single country can have its e...

Send us Fan Mail The Sudan conflict began over a month ago, and the consequences for the population are getting more and more serious.  In this episode we take a long hard look at the conflict in Sudan, and what the UN and humanitarian agencies here in Geneva – the ones whose very purpose is to either prevent such conflicts happening, or at the very least help ease the suffering – can actually do....

Send us Fan Mail This week, Inside Geneva goes behind the scenes with the ICRC’s prisoner exchange in Yemen. Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC: "I look at my kids, I look at my family, and I say ‘imagine now there is a frontline between us, and my son, my brother, my mother, my father are captured and I can't see them for a year, or two, three, four". Can the move help bring peace to Yemen? Da...

Send us Fan Mail Russian President Vladimir Putin has been indicted for war crimes. This week, Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes asks whether international law can really bring justice. “The real crime of crimes in this story is the decision to go to war. Every other crime – the deportation of children, the crimes against humanity, the war crimes – is a consequence of the decision to go to...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Inside Geneva we take a long hard look at how aid is delivered, and why it is often obstructed. Did UN aid agencies fail Syria after the earthquake? Marco Sassoli from Geneva University speaking to Inside Geneva says: "The UN being a club it represents its members, and therefore it considers that it cannot do anything on the territory of a member state with...

Send us Fan Mail This week Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes talks to authors who have written about humanitarian topics. What is it like to track down human rights violators? “Each day in court, seeing Hissène Habré I would pump my fist: ‘my God, we got him.’ But you never knew, and I have to say when they started reading the verdict it was such joy, but it was also a relief. I mean I fel...

Send us Fan Mail The UN Human Rights Council is set to discuss Ukraine, Ethiopia, Iran, and more. Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes asks: what about China? “If there’s no pressure coming from the international community, if there’s no scrutiny over China, if there’s nothing happening, China is basically going to take it as a sign that they’ve got the green light to continue their abuses,”...

Send us Fan Mail One year on from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes is joined by conflict resolution experts to discuss what the prospects for peace are, and how it can be won. “The fact that we’re talking about the possibility of using nuclear weapons, the fact that we’re talking about the possibility of the United States and China going to war over Taiwan; i...

Send us Fan Mail After two devastating earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria, Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes looks at the challenges aid agencies face when compassion and humanity run up against the obstacles of geopolitics. In Syria, the disaster comes on top of 12 years of conflict. “My teams ask me, the people ask me, our partners ask me: why is this happening to us? They just came out of...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the Inside Geneva podcast, host Imogen Foulkes has an in-depth conversation with Volker Türk, the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “I have had a lifelong commitment to the human rights cause,” says Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, about what attracted him to a job some call the UN’s toughest. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights t...

Send us Fan Mail The war in Ukraine is almost a year old. Inside Geneva asks what role cyberwarfare has played. Christian-Marc Lifländer, head of NATO Cyber Defence Section: "Cyberspace has been central to the war in Ukraine. It has been used to shape the battle space. Cyberattacks were used to lay the ground for the invasion." Its influence has been stealthy… Charlotte Lindsey, CyberPea...