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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 under international law.

They also warn that if the repression of women in Afghanistan is not challenged, it could happen in other countries too.

Listen now to the full episode.

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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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 equality.

Listen to the full episode now.

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• Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
• Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en

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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

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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 everyone, socially, economically and politically. So why is it so out of fashion?

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• 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

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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 Aklouk, aid workers from the Norwegian Refugee Council, about the huge task and the very limited resources.

Listen now and subscribe to the podcast.

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• 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

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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, funding cuts, standing up for our rights and much more.

Listen to the full interview and subscribe to our Inside Geneva podcast!

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• 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.

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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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 of the Red Cross
(ICRC) develop a new digital emblem to warn cyber warriors against attacking protected structures like hospital software, or confidential data.

“Cyber attacks are increasingly carried out by machines. It’s a machine talking to another machine, and this certificate is a way to identify something that the machine will understand and not attack.”

Such attacks are already happening.

“The ICRC suffered from a cyber attack in 2022. It’s not a question of if, it’s more question of when. We know that the ICRC has access to information that is highly interesting for state or non state armed groups,” says Stoll.

And they can cause enormous harm,

“[such as] the distress of people not being able to get the information online because it was hacked or the fact that some information might put your family or you at risk because you belong to a tribe or clan that is under attack.”

Join host Imogen Foulkes for an in-depth discussion – how do we uphold the Geneva Conventions in 21st-century wars?

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• Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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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 Newport.

Originally from Canada, she has worked all over the world, in the most challenging environments.

“I worked a lot in acute malnutrition response for a number of years, including in Niger. It’s hard to see, but you can really do something, for example a little malnourished child comes in and, if they get Plumpy Nut and proper care for six weeks, they become a fat little cute kid and they go home,” she says.

Now she’s at the heart of MSF’s Ebola response, in Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“It’s not just an Ebola outbreak. It’s an Ebola outbreak in a context with massive humanitarian needs, that has high insecurity and where there’s ongoing conflict. We see the outbreak is starting to go into areas with high insecurity, where we hear about community deaths but you don’t have access to them, to be actually sampling to see if it’s Ebola or not, or to have a proper Ebola response.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) says this outbreak is spreading at record speed.

“A mother had her child, the child was sick, and then the mother died of Ebola. The grandmother took the baby, came to where our project is, and the grandmother died. The baby is now sick with Ebola, none of the family wants to come to the child because everyone that touches the child dies. It just breaks your heart,” says Newport.

“And people here they are people and we are all humans and so I have a hard time understanding why we can’t connect that way,” she says.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to listen to the full interview.

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

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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 candidates – we hear from them. What are their plans?

Rebeca Grynspan, candidate for Secretary-General: 'My criteria of success as secretary general is that nobody will ask me again: Where is the UN?' If that question continues we will be irrelevant.'

What are the UN's challenges?

María Fernanda Espinosa, candidate for Secretary-General: 'I think the UN does not suffer from a crisis of purpose or principles enshrined in the Charter. It suffers from a crisis of delivery of impact, of accountability, and of inclusion.'

And what does it still have to offer?

Michelle Bachelet, candidate for Secretary-General: 'Multilateralism has a lot of problems, but if you didn't have a multilateral system, children in the refugee camps wouldn't have vaccines. People displacement wouldn't have support. So there's a lot of things that multilateralism has done and we need to improve.'

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.

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