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." The humanit...
Jun 24, 2025•44 min
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 dis...
Jun 10, 2025•35 min
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 succ...
May 27, 2025•34 min
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 are ...
May 13, 2025•34 min
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 are hitting women...
Apr 29, 2025•45 min
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 preaching wa...
Apr 15, 2025•35 min
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 that’...
Apr 01, 2025•36 min
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 now a...
Mar 18, 2025•42 min
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 a...
Mar 04, 2025•41 min
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. One...
Feb 24, 2025•37 min
Send us a text On Inside Geneva, we take a deep dive into the United States’ cuts in foreign aid. “In Colombia, they’ve just had to lay off 200 staff who were doing the demining in the south of the country. So, all of a sudden, these families have no work. And the alternative in the area, you know what it is: coca plants. So how is that in the US interest?” asks Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. “The freezing is not democratic. Congress has voted for some ...
Feb 18, 2025•44 min
Send us a text 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...
Feb 11, 2025•3 min
Send us a text With Israel banning UNRWA and the US planning to withdraw from WHO, our Inside Geneva podcast reports on a turbulent couple of weeks for United Nations agencies. In Gaza, Israel’s ban on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has come into effect. “UNRWA is what we call the backbone of the humanitarian operation. Meaning that they not only bring in aid themselves, but they are also the operation on which all other humanitarian ...
Feb 04, 2025•44 min
Send us a text In this week’s Inside Geneva podcast episode, we ask: what makes a good peace agreement? “Peace is not just a status. Peace is a process, and it’s a process that is part of politics in general,” says Laurent Goetschel from Swisspeace. So, are quick peace deals possible? “When someone says, ‘I want to have an agreement in 24 hours,’ my response as a professional is, ‘Okay. What are our ideas? What is possible right now? What is the most that can be made out of this possibility, if ...
Jan 21, 2025•31 min
Send us a text 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...
Jan 07, 2025•38 min
Send us a text In 2024 there are more than 100 conflicts ongoing, worldwide. A record number of aid workers have been killed. Tom Fletcher, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator: ‘It’s not just the ferocity of these conflicts, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria. It’s about that wilful neglect of international humanitarian law. And as a result we seem to have lost our anchor somehow. That scaffolding, that we felt was there, international humanitarian law that I was hoping we’d be taking for granted at this p...
Dec 24, 2024•38 min
Send us a text In this week’s Inside Geneva episode, UN correspondents in Geneva and New York look back at 2024. Dorian Burkhalter, journalist, SWI swissinfo.ch: ‘Wars everywhere, climate change, deepening inequalities, AI…it’s just threats everywhere. But it just seems like the more global our problems are becoming, the weaker the UN is also becoming.’ But is the biggest event of the year the US election? Nick Cumming-Bruce, contributor, New York Times: ‘It’s hard to top the US election because...
Dec 10, 2024•34 min
Send us a text Is the world still committed to human rights? Our Inside Geneva podcast is in Strasbourg, where the Council of Europe is discussing how to defend the fundamental principles we agreed upon after the Second World War. “We can’t just say, ‘Do it because it’s a human right’ or ‘Do it because it’s in a treaty.’ We have to demonstrate: ‘Do it, and this is how it will make your society better and stronger,’” says Michael O’Flaherty, Human Rights Commissioner at the Council of Europe. Wit...
Nov 26, 2024•32 min
Send us a text 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...
Nov 12, 2024•32 min
Send us a text On Inside Geneva this week we talk to the people behind a new book about life in Gaza, told through the words of those who live there. “People are actually travelling in the middle of a war, in the middle of Gaza at midnight – the peak of the risk, if you like – to get somewhere where they can get a better internet so they can actually talk to us,” says Mahmoud Muna, editor of Daybreak in Gaza. This book, edited by Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller with Juliette Touma and Jayyab Abu...
Oct 29, 2024•43 min
Send us a text The presidential elections in the United States (US) are just a couple of weeks away. What will they mean for international affairs, for Ukraine, for the Middle East, for humanitarian work, for international law and for the United Nations (UN) in Geneva? “When I was in the US, I definitely saw that there is no interest for anything called multilateralism or collaboration globally. Because it’s a matter of support – political, financial and moral support for international questions...
Oct 15, 2024•39 min
Send us a text 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, form...
Oct 07, 2024•33 min
Send us a text For 40 years, there has been an absolute ban on torture. But it still happens… “Horrific things can happen to you. Nobody is there to help you. Nobody is there to document it, etc. And I think sometimes we speak about torture without putting ourselves in the shoes of what this is,” says Gerald Staberock from the World Organisation Against Torture. On our Inside Geneva podcast this week, host Imogen Foulkes finds out how the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or De...
Oct 01, 2024•32 min
Send us a text 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 W...
Sep 17, 2024•36 min
Send us a text The World Trade Organisation (WTO) Public Forum is underway in Geneva and its key theme is ‘re-globalisation’. Are we nervous of that word? Inside Geneva sat down with WTO officials to find out what it means. “Trade has been a very powerful force for reducing between-country inequality. Since 1995, for example, since the foundation of the WTO, extreme poverty in the world has been reduced from 40% to 10%, because of growth in many countries that was also export-led,” says Ralph Os...
Sep 10, 2024•37 min
Send us a text Conflict-related sexual violence has existed for as long as war itself – forever. “It is a weapon of war. I would say it’s a weapon of mass destruction. It is really maximising harm,” says Esther Dingemans, Executive Director of the Global Survivors Fund. In Inside Geneva’s final summer profile, we talk to a woman working to support survivors of sexual violence…from Sudan, to Ukraine, to Syria, or Chad. “Young girls have been raped in front of their parents. Fathers are bound to c...
Sep 03, 2024•29 min
Send us a text It’s three years since the Taliban took back control in Afghanistan. Inside Geneva talks to an Afghan human rights defender. “I was scared and I could see it coming. Yes, I mean, I think for the women of Afghanistan, we knew that the Taliban taking over would mean a dark future for women,” says Fereshta Abbasi from Human Rights Watch. In three years, women’s rights have been steadily, and brutally, repressed. “No matter what we have done in the past three years, we haven’t been ab...
Aug 20, 2024•26 min
Send us a text Join us for a special extra edition of Inside Geneva to mark World Humanitarian Day, with testimonies from aid workers who have given their all – and who have often lost a great deal. “So I had taken him to the airport together with our child, and, yes, it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him,” says Laura Dolci. Dolci’s young husband Jean-Selim was killed, just weeks after the birth of their son, in the bombing of th...
Aug 19, 2024•31 min
Send us a text In the fourth episode of our summer profile series on Inside Geneva, we talk to a Geneva career woman and a Geneva asylum-seeker about a project to unite communities through sport. Surely the world’s humanitarian capital is good at welcoming refugees and immigrants? “We have all these international organisations working on various global challenges. But when you talk to people from Geneva, they don’t really know what’s happening in this bubble,” says Lena Menge, from the Geneva Gr...
Aug 06, 2024•24 min
Send us a text On Inside Geneva, we bring you part three of our summer profile series. This week we talk to a doctor looking for treatments for some of the world’s most neglected diseases. “Neglect means that there are diseases that affect an important proportion of humanity but for which no new drugs have been developed because there is no money in it. Because they affect very poor populations in remote rural areas,” explains Olaf Valverde, clinical project leader at Drugs for Neglected Disease...
Jul 23, 2024•30 min
