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 not to have a place in the 21st,” says Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
The UN is supposed to be able to prevent, and end conflict. How is it doing?
Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group: “I think the UN high command on the one hand, and the Israelis on the other hand, have just decided that in rhetorical terms their relationship cannot be saved. And they are laying into each other in very firm language.”
What about individual governments, including Switzerland’s?
“Now is simply not the time to be further suffocating the human rights community in Israel and Palestine. The presence of armed conflict makes human rights defenders work more, not less, important. This is the exact wrong moment to stop supporting civil society,” says Erin Kilbride, a researcherat Human Rights Watch.
Are politics getting in the way of humanity?
“There are two problems here: the first is the difference between humanitarian and political. And in a situation of war, which we’re in now, it’s very difficult to make that distinction,” adds Daniel Warner, a political analyst.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interviews.
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.
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 not to have a place in the 21st,” says Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner.
The UN is supposed to be able to prevent, and end conflict. How is it doing?
Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group: “I think the UN high command on the one hand, and the Israelis on the other hand, have just decided that in rhetorical terms their relationship cannot be saved. And they are laying into each other in very firm language.”
What about individual governments, including Switzerland’s?
“Now is simply not the time to be further suffocating the human rights community in Israel and Palestine. The presence of armed conflict makes human rights defenders work more, not less, important. This is the exact wrong moment to stop supporting civil society,” says Erin Kilbride, a researcherat Human Rights Watch.
Are politics getting in the way of humanity?
“There are two problems here: the first is the difference between humanitarian and political. And in a situation of war, which we’re in now, it’s very difficult to make that distinction,” adds Daniel Warner, a political analyst.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interviews.
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.
Speaker 2:The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Amas, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Speaker 3:I think the UN High Command on the one hand, and the Israelis on the other hand have just decided that, in rhetorical terms, their relationship cannot be saved and they are laying into each other in very firm language.
Speaker 1:If there is a hell on earth today, its name is Northern Gaza, people who remain there.
Speaker 4:Their existence is death, deprivation, despair, displacement and darkness. 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.
Speaker 5:Now is simply not the time to be further suffocating the human rights community in Israel and Palestine. The presence of armed conflict makes human rights defenders work more, not less, important. This is the exact wrong moment to stop supporting civil society.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there are two problems here. The first is the difference between humanitarian and political, and in a situation of war which we're in now, it's very difficult to make that distinction.
Speaker 1:Well, hello every morning. Welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Folks and I've got our long standing analyst, daniel Warner, back with us in the studio today. Hi, danny.
Speaker 2:Good morning Imogen.
Speaker 1:So we're getting together in a pretty tricky time for the UN and for the world.
Speaker 2:Tricky and rather disappointing in many respects.
Speaker 1:And worrying.
Speaker 2:Very, very worrying. This could be the beginning of something much larger, but even as it is, it's horrifying to watch what's going on.
Speaker 1:It really is, and we'll come to this in more detail perhaps over the course of this program. Listeners, you may have guessed we are going to be talking about the Middle East again and, in particular, looking at where the UN sits in this terrible crisis. Is it ineffective, is it helpless, or are there things it can do? So one of the things that I've been hearing and you too, I expect, danny over the last three to four weeks is here in Geneva is the agony of the humanitarian organizations Watching what has happened, the cruelty and brutality of the attack on Israel and now this shocking attack on Gaza, where the very things that humanitarian agencies the World Health Organization, the ICRC want to be able to do, they can't.
Speaker 2:Imogen. I think we have to be very clear from the beginning that New York deals with peace and security in the Security Council, the General Assembly and here in Geneva. We're really limited in a sense to specialized agencies like the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the High Commissioner for Refugees, World Health Organization and we have the International Committee of the Red Cross here. So in a sense, the actual fighting and conflict going on is something that New York should be dealing with, whereas the agencies the Red Cross here in Geneva should be dealing with human rights and humanitarian law which is based on a certain level of peace and security.
Speaker 1:And peace and security are the things we just don't have at the moment and, ironically, we're just winding up peace week here in Geneva. It has kind of ironic poignancy, if you like, to have peace week with a conflict, a terrible conflict in the Middle East, a conflict in Ukraine that slipped off the headlines a bit, all violence in Sudan. Nevertheless, a lot of very well-meaning, good-hearted people were in Geneva for a peace week, and one of those that I caught up with was former Human Rights Commissioner Zaid Raad Al Hussein, and of course, what I wanted to talk to him about was this particular latest very violent, very dangerous conflict in the Middle East. So let's first off have a little listen to what he has to say.
Speaker 4:What happened on the 7th of October needs to be condemned. I mean, the actions of Hamas resemble, as Yuval Harari said, the Einsatzgruppen in 1941 in Ukraine. The willful execution of people, children and their families is something that the Israelis haven't felt, not since the days of the Holocaust, and so it strikes them very deeply. And from the Palestinian and Arab side, and much of the world you know, the suffering of the Palestinian people has been a never-ending story. The occupation is not enforced with rose water and ice cream. The occupation has for 56 years, been enforced by military force.
Speaker 4:The intimidation, the daily suffering and indignities of the Palestinians have gone on for so long and for them, what they're seeing happen to their fellow nationals in Gaza is horrifying. I don't think there can be any doubt that there is collective punishment, because when you switch off the water and medicines and essential food to the people 2.4 million people how could it be otherwise? This is not targeting of a particular group, it's a targeting. It seems to be a targeting of the people, and the Secretary General was right to say what he said. It's inevitable, given the depth of the passions, that he would be attacked, but so be it. The UN has to say things as they see them.
Speaker 1:We're in Geneva. This is the home of international humanitarian law, the home of the Geneva Conventions. Surely, if there are people who can remind the Warring Parties of what they should be doing, they're here. And yet maybe they're trying, but nobody appears to be listening. I'm just wondering if you think these standards are kind of over.
Speaker 4:Well, if they're over, then we have a world of anarchy awaiting just around the corner. We will be pitched into a world of panic and anarchy, and if that's acceptable, then that will be what we're going to pay for our inattention to the rules, if we've decided that all of this is meaningless. This is not a one-off. This is now a pattern that has developed over time possibly 20 years where there's been willful neglect of the rules and the use of the veto, which is really quite corrosive because it undermines the integrity of the very establishment that's supposed to, the very institution that's supposed to act collectively, and then, without there being any action, the organisation looks absolutely helpless.
Speaker 1:You mentioned earlier this week the 1930s, with wars between China and Japan, the Spanish Civil War, and you mentioned that the League of Nations was powerless. The League of Nations didn't survive. Are we looking at the end of the United Nations?
Speaker 4:Well, if we again, if we want a world that's utterly anarchic, then I would say well, that's, perhaps that may happen, and we'd have to suppose that we don't want that.
Speaker 4:We don't want a collapsed world, because the other side of that is immensely more horrifying than where we are now. Immensely, we still have nuclear weapons about. We have a world that's reneging on its commitments to human rights in many respects. I mean, if we want to plunge ourselves into the abyss, we can do it, of course, and it doesn't take much intelligence to see, though, that we will all suffer most grievously and millions of lives will be lost, and whether we can even survive it is a question, so I don't think we have much alternative. I mean, what we have to deal with is the immense stupidity of the wars that currently are in place, and we have to deal with also existential threats which face the planet in its totality, 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, and diverting our attention from these more existential questions that affect our existence on this planet.
Speaker 1:He's a very thoughtful person, isn't? He Extremely thoughtful he really struck me he said, particularly since the Middle East. This is a 20th century conflict and we just haven't solved it. And here we are, a quarter of the way through the 21st, and it's still here, and we have a mountain of other challenges.
Speaker 2:But one of the interesting things, many interesting things I talked about.
Speaker 2:He used the word Anarchy and he's mentioned rules, and it does seem to me that the UN or, if we want, a civilized society, follows certain international rules. And what we're seeing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a egregious violation of international law, and what we see now in Gaza with Israel and Hamas are egregious violations of international humanitarian law. And the question someone should ask is well, why doesn't the UN or someone do something about that? And the answer is simply that the UN has no army, it has no really power to enforce the rules of international law. It has soft power, and what I'm looking for is some form of moral or political authority that can have an influence on the different actors, but certainly here in Geneva, the capital of human rights and humanitarian law. The fact that the threshold has been so violated in the recent past, both in Russia, ukraine and now in Gaza, leaves one to wonder, as you asked the question, imogen is this the end of the UN? But, more fundamentally, is this the end of international law and certainly international humanitarian law?
Speaker 1:You do have to wonder. I mean, I think you wonder if there's been some act of collective forgetting, why we introduced this stuff after the Second World War, when we said never again. We can't do this stuff anymore to each other. It's just too, too bad. And yet here we are again. Now you talked about the UN and Zaid there said the UN looks helpless. Guterres, the Secretary General, antonio Guterres, made a statement very early on after Israel launched its retaliatory attack on Togasa and said this is collective punishment. This did not happen in a vacuum. Cue incandescent rage from Israel, whose ambassador called for Guterres to resign. Personally, I'm wondering, you know, if the UN Secretary General cannot say this, who can? Who?
Speaker 2:can.
Speaker 1:Who is going to remember the context of this conflict?
Speaker 2:Well, imogen, I would go even further about what is to be done here. The Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories for a year was a friend, richard Fork, and Fork was never allowed into Israel to give his reports and he was always accused of being anti-Israeli and pro-Arab, which is absolutely not true. But even if the statements by Gutierrez are valid, the question is what's the follow-up? Now we do know that there are people examining human rights violations, humanitarian law violations, and eventually perhaps something will come to the International Criminal Court. But in a larger sense, that will take time and we do see the actions of both Hamas and Israel violating basic international humanitarian law, as you talked about collective punishment, but we don't see them afraid of the fact that one day they might wind up in a court of law.
Speaker 1:No, they don't, and one of the reasons might be is that the UN's most powerful body is, of course, the UN Security Council. Just coming onto another person, I talked to Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group because he's been looking from the New York perspective at this conflict in the Middle East and he's pointed out that the Security Council cannot even agree on the mildest of wordings to say what it thinks, and particularly the UN was created to be able to say and do something about a vicious war when it erupts. And again we come back to that word that they'd used, that others have used helpless. Let's have a listen to what Richard Gowan had to say, because he said he thought that the Security Council had just been kind of performative and theatrical and posturing Well.
Speaker 3:there's always a huge amount of theatre in UN diplomacy. What states are doing in the Security Council is really sending out signals to their domestic audiences, to the global audience, about their principles and their vision of the war in the Middle East. They're not really negotiating an end to the war, and even if the council were to call for a ceasefire, israel might ignore it. So you do have to see this as performative diplomacy.
Speaker 1:Not much help. We have a terrible conflict in the Middle East right now, but we have also other parts of the world. We still have Ukraine, which has slipped out of the headlines.
Speaker 3:Well, diplomats are rather grimly joking that Ukraine has completely disappeared from conversation in New York. Prior to last month, the Security Council had held scores of meetings on Ukraine, and almost all of those were purely for theatrical effect. The US has used the Security Council as a place to put a spotlight on Russia's aggression, and what we're seeing now is Russia taking the opportunity to turn the tables and put a spotlight on the US failure to restrain Israel. So the Russians are enjoying this moment enormously because they're able to harp on talk about US double standards and for once, they are not the bad guys in the Security Council chamber.
Speaker 1:It's not really new, is it? I mean, we've seen this paralysis also over Syria, and yet, if I comment it from the Geneva perspective, the humanitarian wing of the UN is desperate and frantic.
Speaker 3:I mean there's a very obvious division between the game playing in New York and the real life-saving work that the UN is doing on the ground trying to get supplies into Gaza. And it's fair to say that I sound very cynical about the Security Council, but some council members, such as Brazil, have worked enormously hard to try and get a resolution endorsing humanitarian pauses and putting political weight behind what the aid agencies are doing in Gaza. So everyone is conscious of that. Anthony Blinken has been to New York to emphasise that the US wants the UN to get more aid into Gaza, but it feels quite detached from the word play in New York, where we're really stuck on whether or not the council can use the word ceasefire, which is ultimately just a matter of terminology rather than something that will fix anything in Gaza itself.
Speaker 1:Do you think the UN Secretary General, who came out very early on saying this didn't happen in a vacuum and talked about collective punishment? I've heard different views about the efficacy, if you like, of saying that.
Speaker 3:It was unusual to see Guterres be so blunt. He's normally a very cautious man and he often avoids strong public statements about conflicts. Historically, he's actually been quite supportive of Israel and fiercely critical of anti-Semitism, so to see him really challenge the Israelis head on was a surprise, and it evidently shocked the Israelis themselves. I think that Ruth Guterres is a deep believer in humanitarianism. He was, after all, the head of the refugee agency for 10 years. He listens very closely to what his humanitarian advisors are telling him, and so I think that he clearly feels that it's his job in this moment to speak up without restraint about the need for assistance to the people of Gaza and the importance of humanitarian aid. Is it politically wise who can say I don't think Guterres was ever going to be a mediator in this conflict. The Israelis wouldn't trust the UN to mediate, so to some extent he is stuck having to fight for the cause of the humanitarians.
Speaker 1:Is this a fight that the UN can win, that people will listen to? We see, for example, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, falker Turg, on a mission to the Middle East. The doors of Israel are closed to him. He asked to go, but he's not going to be welcomed there, and he too was very blunt. He didn't say these are possible war crimes. He said these are war crimes by both Hamas and Israel.
Speaker 3:Look, I think the UN High Command, on the one hand, and the Israelis, on the other hand, have just decided that, in rhetorical terms, their relationship cannot be saved, and they are laying into each other in very firm language, and Guterres has not retreated from his strong language over the war. In fact, he's probably become more outspoken as the weeks have gone by. You do have to keep in mind, though, that at the end of the day, when the shooting stops, the UN is going to be there to help clean up the mess, and that's the role that the UN always plays in the Middle East. It's humanitarians, and the UN relief agency in Gaza will be responsible for trying to restore normal life, trying to guide reconstruction Down the road. The Israelis will come to the conclusion that they need the un Because it is there to do the dirty work of clean up, and the us and the europeans will want to channel their funding For the reconstruction of Gaza through un frameworks.
Speaker 1:Kind of a cynical, depressing view of the un. No chance of mediating peace. But they can come in after once we finish killing each other and do the clean up.
Speaker 2:Kind of band-aid band-aid humanitarianism. But I was impressed by Richard's comment about the paralysis at the security council and I do mention that in the last annual meeting this fall of the un, four of five leaders Of the permanent members of the security council were not there China, russia, france, england. The only one who was there was Joe Biden, the president, but of course the United States is the host. So if four of the five leaders Of the permanent members of the security council don't show up for the annual meeting, it does give an indication of their attitude to what they think the organization can do. On the other hand, I think I was comment about the agencies based in Geneva to clean up the mess after is spot on. But again there's a certain fatigue when New York can't do its job guaranteeing or enforcing peace and security, the agencies in Geneva have to find their way in the situation to clean up the mess as best they can.
Speaker 1:Well, I think this is the classic thing. I've heard over and over again here in Geneva the aid agencies saying we cannot be sticking plaster taping over the gaping wound caused by your lack of political will, that these crises go on for years and years, and years. We could talk about Afghanistan, we could talk about Syria, you know, yes, wars happen, yes, cleanups are required, but to have nothing on the New York end of peace, mediation, reconciliation and always the sticking plaster from this and makes the humanitarian agencies very, very frustrated. What I heard from Gowen also was the European countries in US will be wanting vectors for the reconstruction funds they will undoubtedly be supplying Once this particular awful conflict comes down a bit.
Speaker 1:And we have quite a domestic story on that, because Switzerland has recently Updates funding for the ICRC and onra in the Israeli occupied territories and Gaza, but it has cut 11 non governmental organizations, suspended funding to them. They haven't given entirely clear reasons as to why. I'm just looking for their statement here. Yes, these organizations are mainly active in the field of human rights. Suspending will make it possible to carry out an in depth analysis of the compliance of these organizations. So, 11 primarily human rights organizations, I think six in Israel and five in the occupied territories. I talked to Erin Kilbride of human rights watch, who has some very serious questions about whether this is the moment to suspend funding from these types of organizations. That's how I listened to what she had to say.
Speaker 5:These are well known, well respected organizations. Many of them, in fact, this was in the Swiss press release. Many of them are focused explicitly on the promotion and protection of human rights, and human rights watch knows all of these organizations and has worked very closely with many of them. They are run by human rights defenders who were working in extremely restrictive, dangerous, hostile environments even before October 7th right. They exist because the human rights situation is and has been dire for decades.
Speaker 1:You think the Swiss have made the wrong decision. That's clear. Why do you think it's wrong? Why do you think they made this decision?
Speaker 5:So there are several reasons again that Human Rights Watch decided to speak about this issue. I mean, first, we should consider the context right, just the timing of this funding cut. So Israel has cut access to food, water, electricity, fuel, medicine to 2.2 million people in Gaza. This is an act of collective punishment and it's a war crime under international humanitarian law. Now is simply not the time to be further suffocating the human rights community in Israel and Palestine. The presence of armed conflict makes human rights defenders work more, not less, important. This is the exact wrong moment to stop supporting civil society. These are the people who document, report and they advocate against some of the most egregious violations of human rights. They make securing justice for atrocities committed possible in the future.
Speaker 5:The other issue that we're seeing here is that, a few days after announcing this funding suspension to local human rights organizations, among them positions for human rights Israel, as you pointed out, the federal council took a decision to request additional funding from parliament in Switzerland for humanitarian aid in Israel, palestine and what they call neighboring countries.
Speaker 5:So this is about $100 million. That's fantastic, but the funding is earmarked for major international organizations, right? The International Committee of the Red Cross, unicef, the World Food Program, and these organizations do extremely vital work, of course, and we want their funding to continue, but to do this within a one week or two week period of cutting funding to these local groups, the message that sends is that only international work is to be trusted. It reifies this fairly colonial, fairly racist idea that local groups, in particular Palestinian ones, cannot be trusted to report on the conflict, to respond to the conflict and to document what's happening, and so it perpetuates these really problematic ideas about who and what can do legitimate human rights and humanitarian work, despite consistent evidence that local human rights defenders are the top experts in their own context.
Speaker 1:I take your point, but some donor countries and maybe Switzerland would be born would say it's actually sometimes very hard to make sure your financial support is going to the right groups, and even harder in the fog of war, if you like, Absolutely valid.
Speaker 5:I mean funders around the world have rigorous checks in place to ensure that their money is going to the right organization. This is why NGOs world over are subjected to extreme levels of scrutiny. The Swiss have and continue to maintain these checks. This is needed again monitoring, evaluation, due diligence, looking at where this funding is going. All of it is valid and all of it is needed, of course.
Speaker 5:And the Swiss actually acknowledged in one of their first statements that they have no information that any of their funding has gone to Hamas or any other militant group.
Speaker 5:If that was the implied concern, right, because, to kind of say the quiet part out loud, that is, of course, the implied concern. And they acknowledged that and said we have no indication that this is what's happening, but we want to conduct this review anyway. And here again, what's interesting is that the work of these human rights organizations has never been more relevant. There has never been a time that they have been as relevant as they are right now. Armed conflict doesn't make that work less important. It doesn't make it less relevant, it makes it more critical. One of the defining elements of what makes the work of human rights defenders feasible is the support that they receive from the international community. I mean defenders around the world, especially and including those working in conflict zones tell us again and again that global solidarity, both in terms of media campaigns and funding and political statements, are really foundational to their practical, but also their emotional, ability to sustain their work.
Speaker 1:So what Erin's highlighting? There is absolutely country funding, taxpayers' money to NGOs. It needs to be rigorously checked. Her point is you actually already checked it, apparently the Swiss around the middle of the summer. But now they're going to suspend it and she feels in a conflict is just when these human rights groups are particularly needed.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, there are two problems here, imogen. The first is the difference between humanitarian and political, and in a situation of war which we're in now, it's very difficult to make that distinction, and international organizations I use the Red Cross as an example are known for their independence, neutrality and impartiality, whereas local groups are more problematic. But the second question, on a higher level, is the Swiss government's neutrality. And we see that the Swiss government has had enormous discussions about arms transfers to Ukraine. It went along with Western sanctions against Russia, which the Russians were furious about. So how does a country like Switzerland, which always boasts about being neutral, take positions? What is it to do in a situation like this? It can say that there are violations of international law, international humanitarian law on both sides, but politically it's very difficult to maintain neutrality. Therefore, it's trying, by not giving money to certain NGOs, to maintain that image of neutrality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I kind of I see your point. I don't think I agree with it though, because I mean these were very carefully selected human rights defenders groups in Israel and in the occupied territories and in Gaza, very carefully vetted by the Swiss government and longstanding funding for them. And okay, we've had this horrible conflict erupt now, but that region of the world was a tinderbox. Anyway, politics was always playing a role, and I actually kind of really tend towards Erin's point that when a conflict erupts like that, yes, you need the humanitarian aid to go in, but surely you need people on the ground who are keeping an eye on ongoing human rights violations towards women, towards the disabled, towards ethnic groups. All of this, and to cut that funding when they know the turf really well, seems to me rather sad.
Speaker 2:I agree with you, Imogen. I'm just saying that I think the Swiss government is under enormous pressure to maintain its neutrality. We can imagine Reagan Gorbachev in Geneva. Now. There has been a change in the world's perception of Switzerland as a neutral country and Geneva as the center of mediation between groups. It's interesting to see Qatar involved in the negotiations about freeing the hostages. Where is the Red Cross? Where is the Swiss government? They're not there.
Speaker 1:I do think the ICRC has some involvement. We saw they facilitated the release of four hostages. I know that they're in, as they say. They talk to all parties. They're working on. We'll see. We're almost at the end. I wanted to leave you with a couple of final thoughts. Let's hear from Richard Gowan just now. Again, it's about where's the UN? Where's it going when faced with all this conflict?
Speaker 3:In the 1990s, maybe in the first decade of this century, there was a moment when UN mediators and UN peacekeepers often were in the lead in ending conflict.
Speaker 3:There are countries, from Liberia and Nepal to East Timor, where the UN played a huge political role in conflict resolution, but that was a brief moment of comparatively good international cooperation, and that moment has passed. I think that what we've seen in Syria, what we're seeing in Sudan and what we're seeing in Gaza now is that in this global political moment, the UN can very rarely lead on conflict resolution, but it does still have a unique set of humanitarian capabilities, and so it ends up providing a humanitarian safety net in conflict situations where peace or prevention are not possible. The classic example of that now, by the way, is Afghanistan, where, after 20 years of trying to support the Afghan state, the UN has been left behind as the main international interface with the Taliban to funnel aid to vulnerable Afghans to avoid the complete collapse of the state and that sort of captures. I think the role of the UN in this current rather bleak geopolitical time Bleak geopolitical time indeed.
Speaker 1:As I said, we are almost at the end. Danny, I just very quickly from you do you think the UN has become a much reduced romp of its original stature?
Speaker 2:We are recording here, imogen, in the old building of the League of Nations, and I think we should never forget that international organizations dedicated to peace and security can stop functioning if there is not, as Richard Gowen says, some will for international cooperation. But there is no reason why the UN should keep going, especially in terms of its role in enforcing peace and security.
Speaker 1:So we're going to wind up now, but leave you, listeners, with some final thoughts from Zaid Radal Hussein. We've tried to unpick the humanitarian versus the political wings of the United Nations. We've tried to unpick why the great hopes that it was set up with in the 1940s aren't being fulfilled right now. And Zaid has a little more reflective point of view. He says that it also lies in us, and perhaps our inability to show understanding and empathy with people we may consider our enemies.
Speaker 4:The pain being felt on all sides is very real. The pain the Israelis feel for their loss on the 7th of October is very real and is very evident, and the anger is palpable. And likewise on the Palestinian and also on the Arab side the pain is very, almost tactile, you can almost sense it. And the sadness, I think, is that there's a focus on the centrality of my pain, the pain my community feels and I feel, and I want the world to stand with me, whoever I may be, and I demand it as a recognition of my suffering. But then the obvious question is but how often do we as individuals side with others who are experiencing pain? How often do we see massive demonstrations in the Middle East for the people of Xinjiang? Or you can make the argument people in Tigray suffer and wear their mass demonstrations in Israel for them. In other words, we've compartmentalized these issues to such an extent. And then there's a very intimate relationship we have with our own pain and the need to have others support us.
Speaker 1:I found that very moving. He looks into the human soul and sees things that have gone wrong with our ability, at the very first moment, to seek peace and reconciliation.
Speaker 2:I think his point is that, in the face of technical globalization, emotionally we're going back to a very tribal reactions and therefore the compartmentalized means that we understand that globalization is taking place, but we're emotionally back into national, tribal sense of pain and who we are and the whole identity crisis is based on this tribalism which to me is a form of insecurity facing globalization.
Speaker 1:The tribal, but also vengeful.
Speaker 2:Well, that's part of tribalism.
Speaker 1:Vengeance seems to be rotten, rather than impunity and justice and so on. It's vengeance Very thoughtful. I think we should go away thinking about that. How often do we think about the pain of the other? And is it productive to want to carry on inflicting pain on the other because they inflicted pain on us? On that note, danny, thanks so much for coming in. It was great to see you again.
Speaker 1:Listeners, thank you for joining us on Inside Geneva, and we'll be back next time with an in-depth interview with the current UN Human Rights Commissioner, falker Tuerck. He's just flying back from a trip to the Middle East now, so I expect we'll have some very interesting things to hear from him. And between now and then you can catch up on previous editions of Inside Geneva, from the situation of women in Afghanistan to human rights defenders in Russia, to debates about artificial intelligence or institutional racism in humanitarian agencies. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland, available in many languages as well as English. Check out our other content at wwwswissinfoch. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening and do join us next time on Inside Geneva.