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 reunites those divided by conflict, and visits the Red Cross Central Tracing Agency.
Anastasia Kushleyko, Central Tracing Agency: ‘I’m calling from the ICRC, I’m calling from Geneva: As of last week he was a POW, he was safe and well. It's always always people are so grateful and mothers, you know especially mothers.’
Second, the UN marks World Humanitarian Day on August 30. 20 years after the Baghdad bombing which killed 22 UN staff, Inside Geneva talks to an aid worker deeply affected by that day.
Laura Dolci, UN Human Rights: ‘So I had taken him to the airport, together with our child, and the yes it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him.’
Laura Dolci, UN Human Rights: ‘The aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper; ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being also to the service of humanity.’
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
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 reunites those divided by conflict, and visits the Red Cross Central Tracing Agency.
Anastasia Kushleyko, Central Tracing Agency: ‘I’m calling from the ICRC, I’m calling from Geneva: As of last week he was a POW, he was safe and well. It's always always people are so grateful and mothers, you know especially mothers.’
Second, the UN marks World Humanitarian Day on August 30. 20 years after the Baghdad bombing which killed 22 UN staff, Inside Geneva talks to an aid worker deeply affected by that day.
Laura Dolci, UN Human Rights: ‘So I had taken him to the airport, together with our child, and the yes it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him.’
Laura Dolci, UN Human Rights: ‘The aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper; ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being also to the service of humanity.’
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogenfolks, and this is a Swiss Info production. In today's programme. Today, we pay tribute to all aid workers who risk their lives serving those in need.
Speaker 3:They are two symbols of humanitarian commitment. 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.
Speaker 4:This is the last group of exhausted and deflated Ukrainian troops Calling from Dacia-Rcaium, calling from Geneva. As of last week, he was a POW, he was safe and well. It's always, always, always. People were so, so grateful, and mothers, you know, especially mothers.
Speaker 2:The massive bomb blast at the UN in Baghdad.
Speaker 5: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.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogenfolks Now. As some listeners may already know, in August there are two very important dates in the humanitarian calendar. On August 19th, the United Nations marks World Humanitarian Day to honour aid workers worldwide and to remember those who have died serving humanity. Later in the programme we'll be talking to Laura Dolce, a dedicated humanitarian worker, about why August 19th is so important.
Speaker 5:The aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper. Ultimately, it's a human being that decides to put its own being also to the service of humanity.
Speaker 1:But before we talk to Laura, the other key day this month is August 30th, Day of the Disappeared. In support of the missing and their families, waiting often for years for news, Tracing the missing and bringing news to relatives, sometimes even reuniting them, is something aid agencies, in particular the International Committee of the Red Cross, spend a lot of time on. We're going to visit the ICRC's central tracing agency in a few moments, but first let's hear from Fabrizio Carbone, the ICRC's director for the near and middle east, about what this work means to him.
Speaker 3:You know, we just have to put ourselves in the shoes. It's very simple. That's what I do, you know. I look at my kids and look at my brothers. 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, I capture and I can't see them for a year, two, three, four or worst. You have no news, so you don't know.
Speaker 3:And this separation and not knowing it's, I believe, one of the most advanced forms of unintentional torture Not knowing what we call in ICRC jargon the ambiguous loss. You don't know it's. You know, when we bring the news to somebody in the case of a missing, we bring the news that a son is dead. If the parents were waiting for five to 10 years to have news, it's almost a relief to know that the son is dead. And this says a lot about what it means to be separated, what it means not knowing. So when you manage in the prisoner release, or even when you've managed to reunite the kids with their family, with their mother, it's something really hard to describe this sense of yeah, purpose A lot of our work as a humanitarian. You don't see the result.
Speaker 1:Do you see this as one of the most important things that the ICRC does? I mean, you do a lot of different things, we know this, but you know I'll tell you.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think this is one of the we call it tracing. You know, it is to reunite families and the release is obviously. I think it's one of the most important activities we have and one of the activities which is the most misunderstood. You know, we often think that it's about just keeping family link. You know, but from a Western perspective or from a country where you're at peace, to keep family-ling is one thing. To keep family-ling when you're in conflict, when there are front lines, when there is violence, when there is displacement, when there is risk, suddenly becomes totally different. It suddenly becomes essential for the people. Freedom after years in detention. It's a hero's welcome on the tarmac at Sonar International Airport. These are the first in an exchange of around 900 prisoners.
Speaker 1:After this year, the ICRC facilitated a huge prisoner swap in Yemen, in which almost 900 prisoners of war were returned home.
Speaker 6:It all hugs in relief at Sonar Airport as a prisoner exchange comes to completion after three days, but it's taken months of negotiation.
Speaker 1:The news coverage showed families hugging, crying with joy. But behind the happiness, fabrizio told me was a long and complex operation.
Speaker 3:You know, I think what people don't realize is how much the life of Yemay Taren is about frustration. It's about saying more often no than yes For Yemen. When I'm in such a situation, I just think about the people I saw in Sana'a, in Aden. I'm thinking about my colleagues, the tough time they're going through. When I announce this, I'm really thinking yes, something positive. And then, yes, when you can announce this, it's because before that there is also a lot of back and forth and you also have sometimes you hope that something will happen. Then it doesn't happen. There is negotiation ongoing and you expect a positive outcome within the next hours and it doesn't happen. So it's an emotional roller coaster. I mean this kind of behind the scene negotiation. And, by the way, when I'm at the press conference announcing the agreement and the coming release, in the back of my mind I'm also. There is the smiley Fabrizio and there is the sweaty one. You know we say oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Speaker 3:And now we need to make this happen. In three weeks time. We need to find the planes and you know, find the plane sounds a kind of logistic issue, but it's not because you're bringing planes in conflict areas. You know, we land in Sana'a, we land close to Marin, which is a frontline. We need to cross borders to bring people back to Saudi Arabia or to Yemen. So it's you need to visit all the detainees and also, once the parties agree and they say now it's up to you, the ICRC, it's a huge responsibility, you know, because you can't fail. You can't fail. It's not an option to fail.
Speaker 1:You say that after it was announced, though there were a couple of delays because the date for this to happen moved quite a few times.
Speaker 3:That must be like you know, it's a, it's a mix of things, you know. So, around 900 detainees you know it's not that. They are all in the same place, in different places, in different prison and sometime in very in some places which are a bit more tense and a bit more sensitive. Yeah, you mean, we had to wait a bit to see the detainees before the release. Then we had e-cups with planes. Sometime, you know, we thought we had a contract and an agreement and then last minute, the logistic that didn't work anymore.
Speaker 3:This is something which is a challenge for us humanitarians, because often when we show what we do, it all looks like something easy, something you know, which goes smoothly. You know, in the case of the release, you see the press conference where I'm there smiling, and then the next picture are the people getting into the plane, getting out of the plane, all these emotional images, the hugging and everything. But between these two moments I mean it's with our nails that we make things happen Sometimes people fail to understand is that we work in dysfunctional environment. We're not doing this in Norway or even Switzerland. We're doing this in a dysfunctional environment where you have conflict and you have a protracted crisis like Yemen. So it's really tough, but it's pleasantly tough, you know, because we know that there is something at the end.
Speaker 1:In some conflicts, though, prisoners swaps are rare, even non-existent. Russia's invasion of Ukraine means there are many prisoners of war in that conflict. Moscow said nearly 1000 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered since Monday.
Speaker 5:Russia now claims, all 2400 Ukrainian troops inside have surrendered.
Speaker 1:The ICRC, despite repeated requests, has not been granted access to all of them, but what it can do is try to match anxious families with the lists of prisoners it does have and give news to both. High in the hills above Geneva, the ICRC's Central Tracing Agency is doing just that. Here's a flavour of a visit I paid there in summer 2022. And this year that work continues non-stop.
Speaker 7:My name is Jelena Milošić-Leiputic and I am the Central Tracing Agency Bureau for the International Armed Conflict in Ukraine.
Speaker 1:You're pretty busy right now.
Speaker 7:Yes, very busy, and this is because we're exchanging news between the families, exchanging news between the prisoners of war, between interned people and making sure that the families know what had happened to their relative.
Speaker 1:Are you getting a lot of calls from mothers from Russia and Ukraine, right?
Speaker 7:now, Together with our delegations in Kiev and in Moscow, we are receiving thousands of calls from the word families asking if we have any information that came to our knowledge about the fate and whereabouts of their family members, be it if they are considered to be captured, so being prisoners of war or otherwise losing contact with them.
Speaker 1:And you, of course, you take no sides here. A prisoner is a prisoner, for whoever they were fighting.
Speaker 7:Yes, the ICRC and its Central Tracing Agency never take sides. We don't take sides in terms of one party to the conflict or the other, but there is only one case when we do take sides, and that's the affected people by the conflict. So when they need assistance, when they need protection, this is by whom we are standing.
Speaker 1:So you're on the side of families who need to know where their loved ones are.
Speaker 7:Exactly, not only on the side of the families who need to know where their family members are, but also on the side of the families who know where their family members are, but they cannot communicate with them, they cannot maintain their family links with them, because both Ukrainian and Russian diaspora is of a considerable size and even if you are not close to the conflict, the worry for your family member is equally strong, even if you are thousands and thousands kilometers away from the conflict. And this is how the conflict affects people, even if they are not in the fighting zone itself. Good afternoon, we are here in our data section.
Speaker 1:Let me just yell at her kindly shows me around the agency.
Speaker 7:So the mailing room. This is the room I'm at All the enquiries, emails or letters, because people still write letters. No email or letter addressed to us remains unanswered, even if it's to say this is not the place where we are giving answers on food distributions. You have to call that number or address your email to this place. So the mailing room.
Speaker 1:How many enquiries do you get a day?
Speaker 4:I would say between 200 and 400 mail.
Speaker 1:The heart of the tracing agency is the call centre.
Speaker 7:These are the sections where we are having people who are Ukrainian speakers and Russian speakers. It requires dealing directly with the families.
Speaker 1:The ICRC doesn't know exactly how many POWs there are in Russia and Ukraine, but it is getting lists from both sides and slowly reconnecting the prisoners of war with their families In Geneva. Russians and Ukrainians are working side by side.
Speaker 4:I'm Anastasia Kushlyko. I'm the interim head of the Russian section.
Speaker 1:How busy are you right now?
Speaker 6:I'm busy.
Speaker 8:I'm busy, I'm busy.
Speaker 4:So when I'm telling them that, well, I'm calling from the ICRC, I'm calling from Geneva and this is a central tracing agency, I do not have that much news for you, but I know that the person is in the list that we officially received from official sources as of last week. He was a POW, he was safe and well. It's written there that his arm is healthy. It's always, always, always. People were so, so grateful, and mothers, you know, especially mothers. So what kind of calls?
Speaker 1:does the agency get? Anastasia tells me about one that she found a little unusual.
Speaker 4:Early April and we just started to visit, there were first visits for coming and you know, of course people are saying well, you know, this kind of messages is very, very and that one was I am very well, do not worry, please, if there is occasion, bring, can you send me four pairs of socks, two kilos of chocolates there was something else, you know, but yes and tea, two packs and two blocks of cigarettes and two packs of tea. I was like, you know, this is kind of the person is mentally, but the interesting part that his sister was living in Switzerland, so, and I was in touch with her, so that's why, you know, we were making the call here she found the person who would transmit it to his place of detention at the end of the day. So you know, so we got his chocolate, we got, he got his chocolate, the candies, you know, but I mean, this is also well human.
Speaker 1:But most messages, as Anastasia and her colleagues Pascal and Jana explain, reflect the grief and desperation of being separated and not knowing where a loved one is.
Speaker 4:Mom, I'm safe. Well, please let me know. In case you would have it by hand, can you give me the phone number of Grandma in Kiev? If I'm released, I will stop by and see her, and he's Russian POW in Ukraine right now and his grandmother is living in Kiev 25% of the call.
Speaker 6:Every day they are starting or they are finishing by crying. You know I was talking with a Russian family mother about her son, 19 years old. She taught me that she doesn't have any news for two and a half months.
Speaker 8:I got a call from a young lady looking for her husband, prison year four. Her husband was in Mariupol, azostal. She told me can I leave with you some personal information? And I said yes with pleasure. If the Red Cross is going to see my husband, could you please leave him that today I gave a birth for a child at 1245, 3 kilos and 6 crowns.
Speaker 1:The people working here answering these phones often have their own stories. Pascal is originally from Gabon. 12 years ago he moved to Ukraine to study. Now he's a refugee in Switzerland.
Speaker 6:I came here because, also, I was running away from war. I came from Ukraine. I went there 12 years ago. I graduated in ecology in Kesson State University. It was not easy to leave everything. I left my house, the one I just bought a few months ago, but when you hear a bump at four o'clock in the morning, we have to park everything and just move.
Speaker 7:Here we have colleagues with many different backgrounds, nationalities.
Speaker 1:For six months now, the calls, emails and even postcards have been flooding in For waiting families. Jelena has reassurance All inquiries are answered, even if there's no news, and all information is kept.
Speaker 7:This information of the Central Tracing Agency is kept forever. So if you are a grandchild of someone who was in the Second World War, you would be able to find information on your grandfather and understanding when he was captured, how he was captured, where he was held and what had happened to him. And this is what this section is doing for the future generations, so that we keep that memory as well for the years and decades and centuries to come.
Speaker 1:And sometimes here in Geneva. The news is good. That says Pascal, is the best feeling of all.
Speaker 6:It's very nice to tell them that, yes, we find him, he's alive. He sent you just a small message. He's good, he's alive and he loves you.
Speaker 1:Tracing the missing, reuniting families separated by war a fundamental part of humanitarian work. No one, you would think, would disagree about how important that work is or try to stop it, but the truth is, aid workers today face increasing risks In Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Ukraine and in many other places. 20 years ago this month, the danger for aid workers was made brutally apparent. Baghdad, august the 19th 2003. A massive truck bomb destroys UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel. On August 19th 2003, a suicide bomber driving a truck laden with explosives drove into the UN headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, most of them UN staff, among them the head of mission, sergio Vera de Mello. One woman whose life changed irrevocably on that day was Laura Dolce, who I had the honour to speak to in Geneva last week.
Speaker 5:I'm Italian and I live in Geneva right now. I work for the United Nations and 2003,. Back then, I was 33 and I was just married to another humanitarian worker and we just had a baby child and my husband, my newlywed Jean-Céline Canan, who himself was French and Egyptian. We had met in Bosnia and he was deployed to the UN mission in Baghdad and he died, along with 21 colleagues, in the terrorist truck that drove into the UN headquarters.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about you and Jean-Céline. You met in Bosnia. You were a kind of dedicated UN couple.
Speaker 5:Yes, we met in 97 in a place called Zazin in northwest Bosnia, so above Bihach, and we were both attending a military, civilian situation, weekly meeting, and, yes, so from there on we became, yes, a very solid, fiercely in love with the work, but with us ourselves, a humanitarian couple basically. And so after that we've lived three years in Bosnia and then we moved to Kosovo when the UN mission got started there in 99. And then from there on we went to New York. I was working for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and then we briefly moved to Geneva and then he was called to support the start-up of the mission in Baghdad and he didn't return.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me a bit about those days in August? You took him to the airport in Geneva.
Speaker 5:Yes, he had come home because our son, matthias Elim, was about to be born and then this little one wouldn't come out on time. So we had two more weeks together waiting for this little baby, and then we spent, basically as a family, three weeks together, and he left on the 17th of August to return to the mission, to be there for another 40 days. And so he had arrived back in Baghdad just the eve of the blast and with friends and colleagues. They were waiting for him with some bubbles and he displayed the pictures of our baby to everybody. They had a party, and the following day he was dead. 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.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was mid-afternoon when the bomb went off. A routine press conference was underway in front of the cameras.
Speaker 5:Then this Then I was out, walking with a pram, like any new mother, I was trying to cope with the baby crying, and it was a very hot summer this was 2003. It was probably our first climate change summer here, at least in this part of the world, and so I came home because it was time for breastfeeding, and so just before, while I was about to pull out Matias Elim from the pram, I just have a quick look at the computer and there is this breaking news, this capital big red title saying blast, explosion and loan on the Baghdad. And then there was a picture that appeared. So I saw the building and the only thing I remember I remember I was leaning forward, and immediately lean forward, and then I was using the other hand to keep moving the pram because Matias Elim was waking up. And then I saw my legs. I was standing and I.
Speaker 5:The only thing I remember is that I saw this shaking legs and I was looking at them and I thought it was somebody else. It was the body of somebody else because I was standing, but this half of my body was out of control, and so the first instinct was to try to sit down and grab Matias Elim out of the pram and hold it very tight because I thought I would fall, and so I was trying to balance myself by keeping the baby with me and then I calmed down, trying to breathe normally again, and then I immediately tried to call that number. But, as I said, after two, three attempts there was this constant sort of beep sound and at that point I knew he was dead. It was that sound on the phone that was a prelude to a tragedy has happened.
Speaker 1:Do you think the UN was in any way naive about its security, that everybody should know? Here we are, the blue flag.
Speaker 5:We're only doing good, or Well, I think that day the 19th of August 2003, was really like a benchmark day in the history of the UN.
Speaker 5:I mean, I think we should have been clearer in understanding the times and the changing times that we were living in, but I still think that, you know, between the head of the mission and everybody down the ranks, this was still a bit the old school, thinking that exactly the UN flag was there to protect, including its own staff, and be basically a shield to, and, in fact, the first readings of what was happening in Iraq after the invasion was really that these attacks were happening against the military, troops and the occupants, or whatever they were called, and not the UN.
Speaker 5:So I think the 19th of August was the day where I think we lost that innocence, probably, or that, as you called it, maybe Naivety, and definitely a UN flag or the sign of the Red Cross, or they are no longer shields per se. And from there on, we've been having more and more of this. I mean, I think here in the Palais des Nations, next to the names of Baghdadi, for instance, you have the list of other colleagues we lost in 2007 in the bombing at the Al-Jir headquarters and then in Afghanistan. Of course we lose day. We lose colleagues every day.
Speaker 1:You still work for the UN. You're dedicated and committed. Yes.
Speaker 5:I do, and in fact I'm actually I think it's 26 years this year.
Speaker 5:So I have to say it was very tough and a very profound decision that I had to take, even in consultation with my family.
Speaker 5:After what happened, I mean, I was 33 left there with this baby child, of course, with a life trajectory that was going to be quite different from you know the plan and the family and the aspirations that we had just so happily signed together as a new couple, as a newly wed couple and young parents. But in all of that I really felt that by staying with the UN or keeping that UN blue flag in our lives would have meant a continuity with what we were, also as a young family. That UN flag means values, means a moral compass, means it's a life choice. And so I thought also that having a child grow without a father because my son has obviously no recollection of his father one way, a very significant and strong way, to try to pass on his father to him was not just by telling him how his father was and what he was doing, but is also to continue to work for that organization and keep that UN flag in the family.
Speaker 1:You talked about the attacks increasing and that there are more and more names here in Geneva inscribed of people who have died, been killed as humanitarian workers. On World Humanitarian Day, what would you say to people who are thinking these are legitimate targets UN aid workers, red Cross workers? What would you say?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean we, the families and friends and colleagues, so those who died or remain maimed on the 19th of August 2003 really pushed for this day to become World Humanitarian Day. And we did that not only to make sure that the memory of our colleagues and friends was kept alive year after year, but also to put this profession a bit up on the surface. I mean, this is a very noble profession. I mean, in those cars, behind those trucks, sitting at these negotiating tables in very difficult circumstances, you have really people that not only have learned hard to do that profession the aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper, I mean, ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being also to the service of humanity. So the resentment, in a sense, should be placed somewhere else.
Speaker 5:And, of course, politically, we know these big organizations, including the UN, may be disappointing, but the operational side of it because that's what it is, I mean the humanitarians, these are the operational faces, these are those who have left their families and lives behind to go to places that are difficult but really driven just by one goal, which is really to make sure that others suffer less. So, yeah, I think, by definition it's a wrong target and it's just ending up compiling more violence to violence and more suffering to suffering. But still, the other message is that even if you do that, you're not really deterring the next generation. I mean, there is this lineup of young people with motivation that, despite what we are hearing and despite the news, they are ready, they're packing their bags to go, they are putting their best years, their youth, their aspiration, at the service of others.
Speaker 1:Those determinedly optimistic words from Laura Dolce bring us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to her, to Fabrizio Carboni and to the ICRC's Central Tracing Agency for sharing their time and their thoughts with me. Just before we go, here's some news about the next edition of Inside Geneva, in which we continue our special series to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with an in-depth interview with former Human Rights Commissioner Navi Peeley, from studying law in apartheid, south Africa.
Speaker 2:I went looking for jobs after I had qualified at law firms. They were mainly white law firms and they would say you're a black person, so we can't have our white secretaries taking instructions from you.
Speaker 1:To becoming the UN's human rights chief, where she took no nonsense from government leaders.
Speaker 2:You stick to the UN principles. I would constantly remind them you passed this international convention, yeah, and you've undertaken obligations, so you have to carry that out.
Speaker 1:That's out on September 5th. Don't miss it. In the meantime, feel free to catch up on earlier episodes of Inside Geneva. Wherever you get your podcasts, write to us at insidegeniva, at Swissinfoch, and review us, tell us what you like and even what you don't like. That's it from me, Imogen folks. Thanks again for listening.