In Inside Geneva this week we get an eyewitness account of a mission to supply Gaza’s hospitals.
Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. I don’t think so, I think what’s brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October, and who go back every day, to do it again and again and again.’
Aid agencies say nowhere is safe in Gaza
Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘A woman with her young child saying to me, are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her ‘You’re in the grounds a hospital, this is a protected space, you should be safe here’. But I couldn’t say to her ‘you’re safe here.’’
And we hear from human rights defenders who have come to Geneva, hoping for support.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, human rights defender, Belarus: ‘I really believe that the democratic, powerful world will its teeth and will show to dictators that they will not prevail. We are not asking you to fight instead of us, we are asking you to help us fight the dictators.’
Are democracies letting human rights defenders in autocratic states down?
Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production Assistant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang
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.
In Inside Geneva this week we get an eyewitness account of a mission to supply Gaza’s hospitals.
Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. I don’t think so, I think what’s brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October, and who go back every day, to do it again and again and again.’
Aid agencies say nowhere is safe in Gaza
Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘A woman with her young child saying to me, are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her ‘You’re in the grounds a hospital, this is a protected space, you should be safe here’. But I couldn’t say to her ‘you’re safe here.’’
And we hear from human rights defenders who have come to Geneva, hoping for support.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, human rights defender, Belarus: ‘I really believe that the democratic, powerful world will its teeth and will show to dictators that they will not prevail. We are not asking you to fight instead of us, we are asking you to help us fight the dictators.’
Are democracies letting human rights defenders in autocratic states down?
Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production Assistant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang
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, imogen Foulkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 2:In today's program, that's something I really will never forget is a woman with a young child saying to me are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her you're in the grounds of a hospital. Under international humanitarian law, this is a protected space. You should be safe here. But I couldn't say to her you're safe here.
Speaker 3:My children asking every day when they're going to say they did it. And there are so many families like mine.
Speaker 4:Without human rights defenders, there are no human rights. Without human rights, there is no democracy or rule of law.
Speaker 5:The disappointment of Sudanese human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists when some of them say that it seems like democracy is not for us. It seems like democracy is not for us.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Fowlkes, and right now, here in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council is underway, discussing everything from the rights of children in armed conflict to the situation in Iran, ukraine, sudan or Myanmar. It's a mammoth session, six weeks long, and many human rights defenders are in town too, to draw attention to the situation in their countries and to try to persuade UN member states with influence to offer support. So later in today's programme we're going to hear from some of those human rights defenders about the work they do, its challenges and its risks.
Speaker 3:But first….
Speaker 1:That's the sound of a World Health Organization team going into Gaza's Al Nasser Hospital to deliver supplies and evacuate the most critically ill patients.
Speaker 2:With the team was a WHO cameraman, so my name is Christopher Black and I'm a communications officer working at the World Health Organization in Geneva officer working at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
Speaker 1:I've known Chris for 20 years and I thought talking to him about the five weeks he spent in Gaza might be something our listeners would be interested in, something a bit different from the claims and counterclaims of the warring parties, instead an eyewitness account from a humanitarian worker on the ground. Now Chris, although based in Geneva, has spent plenty of time in conflict zones, from Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of Congo. I asked him first what his impressions were arriving in Gaza.
Speaker 2:Coming into Gaza, because again, we've seen it on media what it's like. Maybe I had an idea in my head of what it was going to be like in Rafa. So the drive from Cairo is a long one. You go across the desert and then you arrive.
Speaker 2:I arrived in the evening in the dark to Rafa and right away you can see that it's a very busy place. This was a town that previously had 300,000 people. Now, at the time when I arrived there, maybe 1.5 million people. Now, at the time when I arrived there, maybe 1.5 million people. So there are a lot of people around. It's a dense place and right away you see that kind of every inch and scrap of empty land is being used by people to live on. They've built their own tents and they're living, basically, even if it's on the road or on a boulevard, in the middle of the road, or sometimes they're living on roundabouts. So that's arriving at the dark, so you have that impression of humanity being all around you. It's a busy place. It's a dense place.
Speaker 2:During the daylight you see that it's also when you have 1.5 million people in a town built for 300,000 with not a lot of services in terms of sanitation, garbage removal, water provision and electricity, immediately there's going to be challenges for day-to-day living for many, many people. So you have a lot of garbage that's on the street. You have a lot of people living in tents close to garbage and sewage. But the one thing that you also are struck by is that people are very resilient. Palestinians are very, very resilient people and every day they were trying to make improvements to the tents that they themselves built. So they're trying to put in sewage, they're trying to put in water, they're picking up the garbage themselves, but it's a constant battle to kind of keep on top of that. So during the day the garbage builds up and in the morning someone tries to clean it up, but it's them themselves that are doing that work.
Speaker 1:You went to support Nassau Hospital. Tell me about your first trip. That was before it was raided or besieged or whatever we want to call it.
Speaker 2:So I went about two weeks before on an assessment mission with WHO colleagues and as well to bring some medical supplies into it at the time because it was partially functioning at the time. So they were still treating patients. They were still treating a lot of patients. There were still displaced people living in the hospital itself and there were health workers living and working in the hospital doing their best in a really horrible situation. There was problems removing medical waste. I remember even at the time there was lots of cats eating in the medical waste, which wasn't a pretty thing to see. But there was a little bit of hope. Like there was a bakery that was functioning. They were trying to bake their own bread for the patients and for the doctors and that was working, you know. So it was health workers and a community doing their best to provide much needed health services to the population that really needed it.
Speaker 5:And then Tonight smoke and chaos filling the hallways of Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility still functioning in Gaza, as Israeli troops mounted a raid in search of Hamas operatives. As Israeli troops mounted a raid in search of Hamas operatives.
Speaker 2:And then I was there a little over two weeks later, so at that point the situation had changed dramatically in the neighborhood and in the hospital, as we now know, and it was maybe as a communicator. I was doing things that I've never done before, such as helping to move the patients, helping to evacuate patients out of the hospital, and it's, I think, something I'll never forget, something. I'll never forget that I had something I hadn't done before.
Speaker 1:I haven't carried a lot of patients, so you're part of this mission to evacuate the patients.
Speaker 2:Your chief role was as a cameraman, but in fact you had to do a lot more yeah my chief role was definitely as a as a witness, let's say, in terms of trying to document the work on the ground of the who in the un um, and I did definitely have to do more than that.
Speaker 2:I had to, in a way, join because of the very few personnel that we have on the ground there, very few personnel that we could move in. It wasn't very many seats on this trip um, so I had to do work that I don't normally do and that was helping to where I could to help move patients, and that was going up four flights of stairs into the ICU and down four flights of stairs in the dark and that night, in a health facility that is basically shot up. There's garbage, there's medical waste, there's sewage, everywhere, there's cats, everywhere, there was even a. There's dogs, there was even a mule in the front of the building, and everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked in the dark. I remember just the faces of patients coming out just when I shone on a flashlight. There was just just a patient there in the hallway in the dark, and they had been there at that point for weeks in the dark, without food, without water and sometimes without medical attention. But the health workers were doing their best. They weren't enough for them there was only a handful of doctors and a
Speaker 2:handful of nurses, no electricity, medical supplies running out, but they were so brave to stick it out and try to deliver those services because they were saving lives. It was really life-changing. It's crazy to say that after 25 years in the humanitarian, more than that, almost 30 years in the humanitarian work based in Geneva but often going to the field in natural disasters and conflicts and outbreaks. But this was really another level in terms of the needs that I saw on the ground and the response that the UN and the Red Crescent were trying to deliver. And that's something I really will never forget is a woman with a young child saying to me Are we safe here? Are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her you're in the grounds of a hospital.
Speaker 2:Under international humanitarian law, this is a protected space. You should be safe here. But I couldn't say to her you're safe here and I couldn't tell her one way or the other, where she should stay or she should go. Israel army trying to enter Nasser Hospital now. But she should have been safe there. That should be a hospital, should be a safe place for everyone, everyone.
Speaker 1:Here in Nasser.
Speaker 2:Hospital.
Speaker 1:Can you process it in the sense that there must be a feeling of satisfaction to be part of a mission that does evacuate critically ill patients, but also a sense of frustration, to put it mildly, to see the conditions of a hospital?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's one of the most dramatic things is to see a hospital, something that is so needed in a community. It's the center of a community, one of the centers of a community, and to see that not functioning is heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking and it's something I don't think I'll ever forget. And to meet the people that are so brave to try to do this work, despite the shelling, despite being in the dark, despite not having all the tools they need to do that, and the Red Crescent paramedics who every day are doing this kind of job, going in and out of these combat areas to try to help people.
Speaker 1:You were showing me pictures of their ambulances.
Speaker 2:Yes, ambulances that have been shot at, that have been shelled, that get stuck in awful roads. It's really an incredible job that they do.
Speaker 5:Today, aid organizations reluctantly suspended deliveries to North Gaza because of security.
Speaker 6:First flower in 20 days, he says.
Speaker 2:People have told me oh, you must be very brave for going to Gaza, and I don't think so. I think what's brave is that the people have been doing this work since early October and who go back every day to do it again and again and again, and who never give up and who are there to deliver. And it's not a lot of people, I mean, it's a couple hundred people. They're trying to deliver to an incredible large group of people that need help.
Speaker 1:You were telling me about the engineer who came to fix the generator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an engineer who had lost his family in an attack but who obviously was scared to go back into this area where there's active fighting, where it's bringing back lots of memories for him. So he was scared, but he did it every day and he kept coming back the next day, the next day, the next day, like this mad scientist. It was in his mind that he wanted to fix this generator because he knows how important it is for a hospital. Hospital without electricity it's basically a dead hospital. So much relies in a hospital in terms of, like I mentioned, the water being pumped to the roof, the oxygen getting to patients, the instruments that are needed to keep people alive. You need electricity for that. So he wanted to fix this problem and he kept going back, day in, day in day, in trying to fix this for us.
Speaker 1:And this is a man who lost his wife and daughter.
Speaker 2:Indeed, and that's something I saw over and over again the dedication of health workers and humanitarians.
Speaker 1:You're back here now. Will you go back, could you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would go back tomorrow if I could. My heart is still there. From the very beginning I sensed, going back to your question, one of the first impressions I had of being in Gaza is not only the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people and the situation that they're under, but it's hard to imagine a situation where every single person you talk to, every single person you meet, has a story of trauma, of death, of loss, of displacement, multiple displacement, having to move multiple times, having lost their homes multiple times. It's rare that you are in a situation where that's everyone's story and that is indeed everyone's story. Today in Gaza, no one is safe. Everyone is on the move. Families that have been displaced three or four times now are watching the news, are trying to figure out should we move or should we not move.
Speaker 2:And and one of the last things I filmed there I was in a little nutrition center because that's, as you know, an issue that's on the rise Malnutrition in children is on the rise and there was a young girl that wanted to meet one of my colleagues and the colleague said to her she was all smiley in meeting her and she said to her what do you want Meaning like how can I help you? What do you want? And the girl's eyes just filled up with tears and she says I want to go home, I just want to go home. And that's the story for everyone there. All they want is to go home, a safe place, peace. And it's not peace for a day, it's peace forever. Everyone needs peace in that whole region ever.
Speaker 1:Everyone needs peace in that whole region. Chris Black, cameraman with the World Health Organization, talking there about his recent trip to Gaza. Now, as we said earlier, the UN Human Rights Council is in session, with a packed agenda, not just in the council chamber, but with dozens of side events all vying for attention to the many acts of repression, violation and basic silencing of democratic voices taking place in our world. I had the privilege to chair one of those side events, hosted by Finland and entitled In Defence of Civic Space and Democracy, supporting the Work of Human Rights Defenders. Because, let's face it, human rights defenders get our attention when they come to Geneva, but what about their work, often risky, when they get back home? Let's hear first from Finland's foreign minister, alina Valtonen, who set the scene for the debate.
Speaker 6:More people than ever in history. Almost half of the world's population will head to the polls this year. Yet holding elections says nothing about the level of democracy. In fact, democracy is in danger. Ten days ago, we got the devastating news of the death of the Russian opposition leader, alexei Navalny. Again, this proves that what autocrats fear the most is people's freedom to choose. No country can take their democracy for granted. Democracy is a work in progress, always changing, never complete and in need of constant maintenance.
Speaker 1:Autocrats fear our freedom to choose. We've seen that in last month's Russian presidential elections, when there was no real choice, and four years ago in Belarus, when Sergei Tikhanovsky, who tried to stand against Belarus's autocratic President Lukashenko, was promptly arrested. His wife, Svetlana Tikhanhanouskaya, then stood in his place promising electoral reform, but after a ballot widely viewed as fraudulent, she had to flee her country. She came to Geneva at a moment when repression in Belarus has slipped down the news agenda, and she brought us up to date.
Speaker 3:Now in our country. Every day, 15-20 people are being detained In our country more than 1,400 political prisoners, but real number is unknown because people are sometimes even don't want their relatives, their imprisoned relatives, to be recognized as political prisoners, because the attitude to them is much, much worse in Belarusian prisons than to ordinary prisoners. Recently, the regime started a new way of torturing people keeping people in isolation in incommunicado mode. It means that people don't get access of lawyers, don't get any letters. For example, my husband, who is in prison for four years already, since March last year, is in incommunicative mode. It means that I don't know if he's alive. What's going on with him. You know my children asking every day when they're going to see their daddy, and there are so many families like mine.
Speaker 3:Journalists, activists, human rights defenders are under huge attack. We have no free media at the moment. All they have been ruined. All the NGOs have been liquidated by this regime. But despite of this, for four years, people are fighting, people are fighting, people are not giving up and, of course, human rights defenders is extremely important.
Speaker 1:A grim picture there from Svetlana, but with a glimmer of hope. She and her fellow Belarusian human rights defenders are not giving up. In a very different context, but with a similar brave message, was Sudanese human rights defender and paediatrician Sarah Abdel-Ghalil, a woman who has spent much of her life campaigning for democracy in Sudan, only to see it ripped away in 2021 by a military coup and then last year by Sudan's descent into civil war.
Speaker 5:Sadly, in 2021, once again democracy was assassinated in Sudan. So, since I was born, I was born to find dictatorship, Then a few years as a teenager, where I understood what is democracy, and then again democracy was assassinated in 1989. Spent all of my youth working to establish a democratic, fair state in Sudan, and then again, in 2021, everything collapsed once again. There has been a lot of work going behind the scenes by the human rights defenders about documentation for the gender-based violence, the serious attacks against women and men, hundreds of cases of rape, about the violence and killing of civilians.
Speaker 5:Sudan has got the largest at the moment internally displaced population more than 8 million. Those people are not seen, are invisible to the world because they are not in camps all of them. They are sitting in houses or in schools or churches or mosques and they're facing a lot of violence and human rights defenders are documenting all of what's been going on but facing a lot of violation by the two sides. There are reports about how the emergency response room, which are making brilliant work, have been arrested, detained, tortured and killed, despite the magnificent work they are doing. The response from the international community we call it paralysed. The human rights defenders, whether they are lawyers, whether they are journalists.
Speaker 1:Journalists have been killed, doctors have been threatened directly by being attacked, and other human rights defenders, and we see that Sudan is not visible, and this is why I'm here today Listening to the testimony of Svetlana and Sarah was Phil Lynch, Executive Director of the International Service for Human Rights, an organisation which supports human rights defenders worldwide and helps them to make sure they get a voice at the UN in Geneva. Phil gave us an overview of decreasing global commitment to human rights.
Speaker 4:The first thing that is important to understand is why defenders like Dr Sara and Svetlana face challenges, and it's because they themselves challenge power, prejudice, privilege, patriarchy and they stand for justice, equality and participation and representation. It's really important to understand who defenders face challenges from. It's from government authorities, but it's also from unscrupulous corporations. It's from non-state actors such as paramilitary and armed groups and extremist organisations, and it's really important in these discussions to identify and name perpetrators. Both Svetlana and Dr Sara have discussed a range of challenges. They include things like legislative restrictions and criminalisation. They face arbitrary detention. They face killing and enforced disappearances, with defenders and journalists being killed in unspeakable numbers in Gaza. They face defamation and stigmatisation. That's particularly an issue for LGBT defenders in places like Uganda and Russia and, as Fetlana has identified, they also increasingly face psychosocial stress and threats and attacks against family members, friends and associates.
Speaker 4:Cutting across these challenges, I think, are two key issues in 2024. The first is that there are very few states, if any, that treat human rights as paramount or apply human rights laws and standards in a principled and consistent way. Recent examples of that include, obviously, the US and many Western states with respect to Israel and Gaza, many OIC states with respect to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang and many of the African states with respect to the situations in Sudan and Ethiopia, among others, and the undermining, the selective application of the international human rights framework robs defenders of a really important tool. The second cross-cutting issue is that there is widespread impunity and lack of accountability for perpetrators of crimes and violations against human rights defenders, and it's an issue which the international community must really step up and act.
Speaker 1:So that's a long to-do list. Protect human rights defenders. Recommit to human rights in general. Don't protect your friends when they commit violations and bring violators to justice. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya agreed. When autocratic states see democratic bonds slipping up on human rights standards, states see democratic bonds slipping up on human rights standards, abuses increase and impunity does too.
Speaker 3:You know what dictators are watching at the moment that human rights are discussed in the last turn, like economy, I don't know something else and human rights are always forgotten, and this fact gives to dictators the feeling of impunity. They know that they can commit crimes against their own people, against political prisoners, against even other nations, and they will not feel consequences for this. They know that the world can wait years and years and years until maybe sanctions are imposed or criminal case will be opened against these people who committed crimes. So it's like, you know, untie hands for dictators and they see power in this. They know that they can wait, they have time and human rights defenders have to ring all the bells that the future of our world actually depends on what decisions governments are making now. If they show to their own people that they don't care about human rights, not only in their countries, but globally, actually stops people to believe in democracy, to believe in human rights.
Speaker 3:Because, on the example of Belarus, I remember how, in 2020, during the peak of our rallies, we so badly needed support of democratic world. You know they strong, powerful voice and people didn't feel it. The first sanctions, for example on Belarusian regime, was imposed only in nine months after the beginning of our revolution, when thousands of people have been already in jail. So now people are asking me why should we strive for democracy? What democracy will give to us? You see, institutions don't work. Democracy is so slow in making solutions, it's so undecisive. And these questions we all together have to answer. Why people?
Speaker 1:need democracy. Don't imagine the fight for human rights and democracy is romantic. Svetlana warned it's hard, it's dangerous, and her brave colleagues in Belarus are often exhausted and asking why they don't get more international support. That chimed with Sarah, who pointed to the huge disappointment of pro-democracy activists in Sudan who just a few years ago thought they were on the verge of real change.
Speaker 5:It's very important now to realize the disappointment of Sudanese human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists when some of them say that it seems like democracy is not for us. And that's not right, because we have never been given the opportunity to practice democracy, to embed it and to protect it. It has been always short periods and then followed by a military coup. Sometimes people ask me you are a doctor, you're a paediatrician. Why are you involved in this? What is your link with pro-democracy activism? And I find that it's very difficult for me to be a doctor calling for universal health access and social justice and ignore the fact that in countries where there is no justice and where there is no governance and there is no health and education, that I will keep quiet.
Speaker 5:During the war in Sudan, now, just in the last 10 months, it was very clear that doctors, journalists, lawyers, those who are in the civic space, are the ones who are leading on advocacy, on evacuation, on documenting human rights violations, when it comes to rape as a tool of war, documenting about those who are missing and those who have been tortured. And it comes to us sadly, as doctors, that we face these violations and types of injuries, to write these reports and to document it and to present that Now. It's sometimes very difficult to find the space to speak without being intimidated. I personally faced that in 2019. I was attacked with my colleagues just for calling for democracy, which is a right for any human being. We cannot have a global division about some human beings who are practicing democracy and building on it and enjoying it and others who are failing behind, just because we have governments that are practising dictatorship and preventing us from our rights.
Speaker 1:Such a wealth of courage, determination and talent, as Sarah and Svetlana describe people dedicating and risking their careers, even their lives, to support human rights and democracies in their countries. We need to value and respect them more, said Phil Lynch.
Speaker 4:The work of human rights defenders is significantly undervalued, and we tend to define human rights defenders by reference to the risks and threats they face, which is important to recognise and name, but sometimes not pay sufficient attention to the values that they promote and the contributions that they make.
Speaker 4:And this is vital because the right to defend human rights and the exercise of the right to defend human rights is integral to the realisation of all human rights. Without human rights defenders, there are no human rights. Without human rights, there is no democracy or rule of law. And so there, I think, are a number of concrete ways in which defenders contribute to the rule of law and democracy. In particular, the first is that they hold government and non-state actors, including corporations, accountable to their human rights obligations and commitments. Secondly, and this is particularly the case for defenders like Svetlana and Dr Sara, they represent and they amplify the voices and experiences of victims and rights holders, as well as communities and groups that are subject to various and intersecting forms of discrimination and oppression. Thirdly, through their expertise and experience, they help shape laws and policies that are informed by and respond to community needs. And fourthly, through their very principled commitment to universal human rights, as well as their research, their evidence gathering, their documentation, their advocacy. They're a really essential antidote to the rising problems of populism and misinformation.
Speaker 1:That panel debate on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council was aimed quite squarely at Western democracies, many of whom see rising populism and misinformation in their own countries and some of whose leaders pay, at best, lip service to human rights or, at worst, speak of them as something of a nuisance which get in the way of national sovereignty. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya had an inspirational message for them.
Speaker 3:So I really believe that a democratic, powerful world will show its teeth and will show to dictators that they will not prevail. They will support all the nations that are fighting for our common rights. We are not asking you to fight instead of us. We are asking you to help us to fight with dictators, to make your mechanisms and tools effective. You have all this. Just launch it properly.
Speaker 1:And those inspiring words bring us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to the WHO's, chris Black, to Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, sarah Abdul-Ghalil, phil Lynch and to the Permanent Mission of Finland for organising such a thought-provoking debate and for inviting me to moderate it. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can email us on insidegeneva at swissinfoch and subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross unites prisoners of war with their families, or why survivors of human rights violations turn to the UN in Geneva for justice. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.