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Inside Geneva

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162 episodes

5 days ago

Send us a text This week on Inside Geneva, we take the pulse of the United Nations as it turns 80. “Someone celebrating their 80th birthday cannot be expected to be in tip-top shape. The UN is an old lady,” says Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director at the Kofi Annan Foundation. Some world leaders don’t have much time for the UN. “All I got from the UN was an escalator that stopped halfway on the way up and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” said US President Donald Trump. Others think it n...

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Social Sciences

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Send us a text This week on Inside Geneva, we take the pulse of the United Nations as it turns 80. “Someone celebrating their 80th birthday cannot be expected to be in tip-top shape. The UN is an old lady,” says Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director at the Kofi Annan Foundation. Some world leaders don’t have much time for the UN. “All I got from the UN was an escalator that stopped halfway on the way up and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” said US President Donald Trump. Others think it n...

Show more...

Social Sciences

Episodes (20/162)

Inside Geneva

Taking the pulse of the UN at 80

Send us a text This week on Inside Geneva, we take the pulse of the United Nations as it turns 80. “Someone celebrating their 80th birthday cannot be expected to be in tip-top shape. The UN is an old lady,” says Corinne Momal-Vanian, executive director at the Kofi Annan Foundation. Some world leaders don’t have much time for the UN. “All I got from the UN was an escalator that stopped halfway on the way up and a teleprompter that didn’t work,” said US President Donald Trump. Others think it n...

2 weeks ago

43 minutes

Inside Geneva

Are Democracies Copying Russia's Repressive Playbook?

Send us a text On our Inside Geneva podcast this week, we ask: are other countries following Russia’s lead in cracking down on freedom of expression? “I feel as though I’m monitoring a repression handbook used by the Russian government against its own civil society and, unfortunately, this handbook has been copied by other leaders in some democratic countries,” says Mariana Katzarova, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Russia. Russian journalists warn us not to take our freedoms for...

1 month ago

30 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva’s final summer profile: ICRC physiotherapist Rieke Hayes

Send us a text This week, in the final episode of our Summer Profiles series on the Inside Geneva podcast, host Imogen Foulkes talks to Irish physiotherapist Rieke Hayes, who now works in Gaza for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “I think I went into physio with the classic idea – I’d have a little clinic, do outpatients, you know, back pain, neck pain. Turns out I really, really didn’t enjoy that setting at all once I was in it,” says Hayes. Her first posting was unexpect...

1 month ago

28 minutes

Inside Geneva

Is the UN still relevant at 80?

Send us a text The United Nations General Assembly has officially opened and the organisation marked its 80th anniversary. Inside Geneva asks whether the body remains relevant. “If you're a refugee in Bangladesh, or seeking protection in South Sudan, the UN may be imperfect but it’s still relevant,” says Richard Gowan from the International Crisis Group. The UN is bigger than many of us think. “We do sometimes forget that the UN still has 60,000 peacekeepers deployed around th...

2 months ago

31 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva’s Summer Profiles: Stéphane Jaquemet

Send us a text On World Humanitarian Day, Inside Geneva spoke to a man who has dedicated his life to humanitarian work. He grew up in a quiet Swiss village – so what inspired him to take this path? “When I was young, I quickly realised that many people didn’t have the same opportunities, they didn’t have equal chances. And to me, that felt fundamentally wrong,” says humanitarian worker Stéphane Jaquemet. His first posting was to Gaza in the 1980s. “Gaza was already in a bad state at the time....

2 months ago

30 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva’s Summer Profiles: the Red Cross Museum

Send us a text Inside Geneva’s fourth summer profile – not a person, but a much-loved museum. “In this museum, we ask an essential question: what does humanitarian action have to do with me, in my life, here and now?” says Pascal Hufschmid, director of the Red Cross Museum. This month there’s a special exhibition, “Tuning in” … to the sound of humanity. “It’s an exhibition conceived as an exploration of sound archives – particularly humanitarian sound archives – preserved here in Geneva...

2 months ago

26 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva's Summer Profiles: Rachael Cummings in Gaza

Send us a text Rachael Cummings of Save the Children is Inside Geneva’s summer profile this week. “When I went into nursing, I also wanted to travel, so nursing gave me that opportunity. That was sort of an 18-year-old thinking, ‘Okay, I can use this to travel with’,” says Cummings. Since taking her nursing skills to humanitarian work, she’s been all over the world. “I think one of the things I’m most proud of is Save the Children’s role in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in 2014 an...

3 months ago

31 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva's Summer Profiles: A Conversation with international lawyer Dapo Akande

Send us a text Inside Geneva brings you our second summer profile, with international lawyer Dapo Akande. “I’m one of those boring people who actually always wanted to be a lawyer. I’m not sure exactly what the motivation was when I was younger, but I think I was very argumentative as a child. And everyone used to say, ‘You should be a lawyer,’” says Akande. As a child in Nigeria, he also took a keen interest in world affairs. “I was brought up in Nigeria and my parents had the BBC World Serv...

3 months ago

28 minutes

Inside Geneva

Special announcement: Summer Profile 2025 is out now

Send us a text Get in touch! Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch 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

4 months ago

1 minute

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva's Summer Profiles: Tammam Aloudat

Send us a text Inside Geneva’s Summer Profiles are back! In this episode we talk to Tammam Aloudat, doctor, aid worker and now journalist. “I was born in Syria, and I spent most of my life there until my mid-20s. I studied there; I went to medical school there,” says the CEO of The New Humanitarian. Was being a doctor in Syria his first choice? “One of the first side effects of autocratic dictatorships is that there isn’t really work outside a few private enterprises, one of which...

4 months ago

33 minutes

Inside Geneva

War, Peace and Cake: The World in 2025

Send us a text 2025 has been a year of conflict, upheaval, and huge challenges to the international system. Gunilla von Hall, Svenskadagbladet: "It all started downhill from 20th of January. Since then, it's just, well, ‘the Ukraine war will be over in 24 hours?’ Nothing happened. It just got worse. Then we had Gaza, then we have Iran, Israel. Then we had the cuts of all the aid. It's very bleak. I think we should just not give up our hope, but it looks really... We have four years." Th...

4 months ago

44 minutes

Inside Geneva

Gaza's Aid Crisis: The Failed Militarization of Humanitarian Relief

Send us a text Israel blocked aid into Gaza for 10 weeks. Then the US and Israel came up with a new plan – without the United Nations. Established aid agencies had doubts. Inside Geneva finds out why. Jan Egeland,secretary general, Norwegian Refugee Council: ‘We would welcome anything that would allow us to resume work for a population that is starving and that has been suffocated by a siege over two months. But this seems to be militarized, politicized, manipulated. People have to walk long ...

5 months ago

34 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva: pandemics and climate change, can multilateralism still work?

Send us a text The world just agreed a pandemic treaty. But without the United States. Is it really a milestone? ‘‘It is a major step forward. I mean, just imagine if we failed. We would not only go back to the point before the pandemic, before COVID-19 struck us, we'd go back to a point much further back,” said Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein from the International Peace Institute. But what about the global challenge of climate change? “We're up against a ticking clock. And even though we've enjoyed s...

5 months ago

34 minutes

Inside Geneva

Toxic masculinity and the rollback of gender equality

Send us a text It’s been 30 years since the Beijing Declaration on Women, a landmark agreement to empower women and girls. “The Beijing declaration was such an incredible moment to say that enough is enough. Women are half of humanity and we have to be better,” says Lata Narayanaswamy, associate professor at the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. But now, some governments are rolling back women’s rights. Humanitarian programmes that help women and girls a...

6 months ago

34 minutes

Inside Geneva

Women, girls and cuts to humanitarian aid

Send us a text On Inside Geneva this week, aid agencies count the costs of funding cuts. “I am most sad for all the millions of people living with HIV and affected by HIV whose lives have been upended. They have lost access to life-saving medication. They have showed up at clinics for support, only to find no one there to help them,” says Angeli Achrekar, Deputy Executive Director for the Programme Branch at the Joint United Nations (UN) Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The cuts ar...

6 months ago

45 minutes

Inside Geneva

Multilateralism, the Global South and the future

Send us a text On Inside Geneva this week, we ask whether the United Nations (UN) and multilateralism have a future. “Is the UN anachronistic? I mean, it was formed after the Second World War. Obviously, it’s getting a little bit dusty,” says political analyst Daniel Warner. Younger generations from the Global South tell us where they see the UN’s flaws. “The countries of the Global North have not stood up to the ideals that they have created in an equitable manner. It’s simply like pre...

7 months ago

35 minutes

Inside Geneva

Democratic rights and freedoms at a crossroads?

Send us a text The world is changing fast. Are democracy and human rights under threat? Our Inside Geneva podcast takes a deep dive. “Donald Trump is unravelling the constitution, where I believe we could describe this as a coup d'état,” says human rights lawyer Reed Brody. What happens when Big Tech gets involved in politics? “It is fine for Instagram or TikTok to realise that I am into biking and then try to sell me bikes. That’s fine. That’s a product. Manipulate me to sell me that. But th...

7 months ago

36 minutes

Inside Geneva

Inside Geneva: where are women's voices in peace talks?

Send us a text In Ukraine, and in the Middle East, men say they are negotiating peace. But are they? “Ending war is necessary to peace without a doubt, but ending war does not mean peace. So, whenever these men use the word ‘peace’ in order to say ‘ceasefire’ and ‘stop the guns’, this is not peace,” says Deborah Schibler from PeaceWomen across the Globe (PWAG). “What the US is doing right now is an extractivist assertion of power, arguably even a second imperial ambition that we are seeing no...

8 months ago

41 minutes

Inside Geneva

Books to make you think 2025: Are Human Rights Being Ripped Away?

Send us a text On Inside Geneva this week, we take a step back from the breaking news and talk to the authors of two books about the better side of humanity. “The defence of human rights is not a matter of holding a candle and singing Kumbaya. The defence of human rights is about playing hardball. It's about putting pressure on governments, making them realise that repression isn't paying because the consequences are so severe,” says Kenneth Roth, author of Righting Wrongs. Those consequences...

8 months ago

41 minutes

Inside Geneva

US-Russia talks on Ukraine: peace or appeasement?

Send us a text On the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Inside Geneva has some big questions about the US-Russia talks this week on ending the war in Ukraine. “Is this really a peace deal or is it just a deal about money? Or is it even some kind of capitulation or a power grab?” asks Inside Geneva host Imogen Foulkes. What does US President Donald Trump want? “Do you want to just stop the war, or do you want to win it? We don’t know what President Trump would consider a win. ...

8 months ago

36 minutes