Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva is a podcast about global politics, humanitarian issues, and international aid, hosted by journalist Imogen Foulkes. It is produced by SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland.
Inside Geneva
Inside Geneva goes to New York: what really happens at the UN?
This week Inside Geneva goes to New York. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly is hearing multiple reports of serious human rights violations.
“I think it’s more difficult to get the human rights message [across] here in New York at the General Assembly. But hopefully we will be heard,” says Mariana Katzarova, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia.
Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan are on the agenda. But so is the situation of human rights groups inside Russia.
“The situation with political prisoners in Russia today is no longer a crisis, it’s a catastrophe. We now have more political prisoners in Russia alone than there were in the whole of the Soviet Union, so that’s 15 countries put together,” says Vladimir Kara-Murza, a former political prisoner.
In Geneva, the Human Rights Council can order investigations – but will New York respond?
“There is Gaza, the situation in Sudan, Myanmar, Syria – so many conflicts and humanitarian disasters, and there’s an inability of member states to reach an agreement,” says Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at Human Rights Watch NGO.
The UN Security Council, dominated by the US, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France, can’t agree – so it’s paralysed.
“I do have moments where I perhaps would like to stand up in the middle of the chamber and say: ‘Hey, do something!’ But that’s not professional and I would lose my press pass,” says journalist Dawn Clancy.
The UN’s main role is upholding peace and security. Is New York failing?
“For peace and security, human rights are the core. Without human rights we cannot have peace or security,” says Katzarova.
Join host Imogen Foulkes for Inside Geneva – in New York!
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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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 3:In today's programme. I think it's more difficult to get the human rights message here in New York at the General Assembly, but hopefully you know we will be heard.
Speaker 1:The situation with political prisoners in Russia today is no longer a crisis. It's a catastrophe. We have more political prisoners in Russia alone now than there were in the whole of the Soviet Union. So that's 15 countries put together.
Speaker 4:Gaza and the situation in Sudan, myanmar, syria. So many conflicts and humanitarian disasters and there's an inability of the member states to reach an agreement.
Speaker 5:I do have moments where perhaps I would like to stand up in the middle of the chamber and just say, hey, do something. But that's not professional and I would get kicked out and I would lose my press pass.
Speaker 3:For peace and security, human rights is the core. Without human rights, we cannot have peace or security.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Fowkes and, as maybe you can hear, and as I promised on our last episode, we're here in New York this week, in part to see how human rights defenders get on when they put their case here, far from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. But first, slightly embarrassing confession coming up In all my years as a United Nations correspondent and all my visits to New York, I've never actually been inside UN headquarters. So I'm standing outside right now. It is a beautiful sunny autumn day, or maybe, since I'm here, I should say fall day here in midtown Manhattan, and the first thing I'm going to do once I get through UN security is go and catch up with a New York-based colleague.
Speaker 5:I'm Dawn Clancy. I'm a reporter here at UN headquarters in New York and I write about the UN you write about the UN from here in New York.
Speaker 2:What's the? I mean, how high on your radar, your journalist's radar, is Geneva. Because in Geneva there's a constant, not just from the journalists we write about it a lot but obviously from the whole humanitarian side of the UN, which is based in Geneva. There's a constant, not just from the journalists we write about it a lot but obviously from the whole humanitarian side of the UN, which is based in Geneva. Utter frustration, grief, almost at the paralysis of the Security Council. Now, when we look at all of the conflicts that we've got, we couldn't get any action on Syria, Ukraine, Russia, not really. Now we have the Middle East nothing there as well, and from Geneva's point of view, they see the kind of rules-based order falling apart because of this paralysis.
Speaker 5:Well, that's absolutely one thing we have in common that frustration. Here, being in New York, you get to sit in the room where they're giving their speeches in the Security Council and they're repeating themselves and you know at the end of this meeting, like there was just a meeting today on Gaza, on the UNRWA decision made by the Israeli Knesset, and you have all these people sitting around this horseshoe table talking and you know nothing's going to happen afterwards, which is frustrating, just like people in Geneva and I guess, being here, I do have moments where perhaps I would like to stand up in the middle of the chamber and just say, hey, do something. But that's not professional and I would get kicked out and I would lose my press pass. No, but I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I think we're all inside standing up and shouting and saying, but I'm with you. I think we're all inside standing up and shouting and saying, hey, do something. But is there any feeling? Do you sense it ever in New York, that if this goes on, we might as well not have the United Nations.
Speaker 5:I have thought that before I have, especially when the war in Ukraine burst open. I definitely thought that because I guess I was still fairly new here and I just had this expectation that the Security Council was going to have a meeting, they were going to get on it and they were going to fix it, and that didn't happen, of course. But as time has gone on, I have grown to appreciate the role that the United Nations plays, even if it can't fulfill its mandate. We're talking about a specific organ like the Security Council, but it is truly the one place in the world where all these world leaders can get together. Even if they're not talking to each other, they still all convene here. You know UN, a high-level week and I think that is really important because otherwise I don't know where else that would happen.
Speaker 2:So I'd actually go along with Dawn's view there. The UN is still really the only place the big powers regularly get together and talk, and goodness knows right now we need them to do that. But, as you can hear, I'm back outside UN headquarters trudging the streets of Manhattan. If you're ever here, bring comfy shoes, but it's worth it, because our next stop is really quite special.
Speaker 4:Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at Human Rights Watch, and we're in New York City in our headquarters in the Empire State Building.
Speaker 2:It's a prime real estate. Very lucky to be here, I think. I'm quite interested, since I've been here a couple of days now and it's kind of weird that, although I've been a UN correspondent myself for 20 years now, I've actually it's the first time I've been into the UN in New York. Some of the things felt really the same, other things felt really quite different. I'm wondering in Geneva, because it's the humanitarian headquarters of the UN, there is frustration pretty much from top to bottom at New York that the humanitarian agencies feel that they are having to mop up blood literally because of the failures in New York of the political wing of the United Nations of the United Nations.
Speaker 4:So, yes, new York as the United Nations headquarters really is kind of the political center of the UN system. And certainly, if you look at the UN Security Council and you consider what it does or doesn't do on issues like the horrific hostilities in Gaza, on the situation in Sudan, myanmar, syria, so many conflicts and humanitarian disasters that have been going on for a very long time, and there's an inability of the member states to reach an agreement. And it's really disagreements among the big powers, really the five permanent Security Council members, russia and China on the one side and the US, united Kingdom and France on the other side. They're these deep geopolitical divisions that we increasingly see. They're making it difficult for the Security Council to do anything. And then, yes, in Geneva, your humanitarian people are left to deal with this. And you're right to talk about mopping up the blood and it's almost a cliche to talk about a lack of political will, and there is that. But it's also that there's a political determination on the part of some people to prevent any action to happen. There is political will to block the Security Council from constraining Israel.
Speaker 4:I mean, we at Human Rights Watch and other organizations have called on governments to stop supplying weapons, that they call on Israel to comply with international humanitarian law, but then they give them bombs that weigh thousands of pounds and are inherently indiscriminate in a densely populated place like Gaza.
Speaker 4:I don't see how they can reconcile those two things. But double standards, no border. We see Russia talking about protecting civilians in Gaza, china as well, and we all know what Russia is doing in Ukraine, where they're bombing hospitals and schools and theaters and the reports of torture in detention and summary execution of prisoners. But if there's one thing that is really difficult to listen to, is the way that governments compartmentalize and they will condemn Russia for attacking civilians in Ukraine, which they should and we do. That is a good thing. We would never want to say don't do that. But then to turn around and to give the government of Israel a free pass because it's their friend and ally. It really undermines the message when they're saying the right things about accountability and protection of civilians in one context and then turning around and saying, well, but it's OK in Gaza. It harms the message.
Speaker 2:But into that UN paralysis that we all complain about so much in Geneva comes a hopeful UN special rapporteur and back in UN headquarters she's got a big day ahead.
Speaker 3:I'm Mariana Katsarova. I'm the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Russian Federation and we're in New York where I am delivering today my new report. It's a thematic report called Torturing the Russian Federation a tool for repression at home and aggression abroad.
Speaker 2:You've also got an event here with former political prisoners from Russia, former Ukrainians who have been held in Russia. It's been viewed as somewhat controversial to put Ukrainians and Russians on the same panel for a side event, and yet I sense that what you're wanting to show New York, and particularly people who may have a rather simplistic view, is that in both these countries there are people absolutely dedicated to promoting human rights.
Speaker 3:I think it's very important to keep in mind the title of my report and the link between repression at home and aggression abroad, and I think this is manifested through the tool of torture, the strategy of torture that has been employed by the Russian authorities against their own people, against the political prisoners, the marginalized group like LGBT persons or conscientious objectors to military service, or the mobilized men who refuse to fight in Ukraine, indigenous people, national minorities. At the same time, the same severe torture methods are used against Ukrainian detainees in Russian prisons. They catch them on the occupied territories, arbitrarily detain them Ukrainian civilians, Ukrainian military and then deported them to the Russian Federation, where many of these people are kept without the charge, again incommunicado, being subjected to torture, anything from sexual violence and rape to use of electric shocks. All these torture methods actually have colorful names. This is how, in the Russian law enforcement system, they're known, both by victims and perpetrators. So, for example, the electric, prolonged electric shocks to the sensitive parts of the body, very often to the genitals, using a field military telephone called topic is known in Russia as a call to friend or a call to Putin. This is the name of the torture method. I mean there are many of these colorful names. It's almost sinister, and I have presented them in the report.
Speaker 3:Putting the Ukrainians and Russians together is also because, first of all, at my invitation, here are more than two dozen Russian human rights defenders from inside Russia and outside who are continuing their human rights work. But also I've invited a representative, the director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning NGO Center for Civil Liberties from Kiev, who are continuing together the two civil societies to help each other in finding the Ukrainian detainees or documenting abuses for future court proceedings and accountability abuses for future court proceedings and accountability. The work that these human rights organizations are doing, they're doing it together in a way, and this is the hope for the future as well, Because in any war you have the level of unacceptance and even hatred between people, but here we have human rights defenders working together in order to have this future justice for the war crimes, for the torture which is performed by the Russian authorities, both in the Russian Federation and inside Ukraine.
Speaker 2:This was the inspiration Mariana Katsarova tried to instill in jaded diplomats in New York, as you can imagine from her descriptions there, the experiences of the human rights defenders she brought to the UN from both Russia and Ukraine were often hard to hear. The side event heard from a very young woman living in Kyiv who, visiting her father in Crimea who was ill with cancer, was arrested and detained in Russia for months. It also heard from one of the most famous Russian political prisoners of all time, vladimir Karamurza, recently released in a historic prisoner swap.
Speaker 1:Just three months ago I was certain I was going to die in that Siberian prison. I never thought I was getting out. So this miracle, the prison exchange on the 1st of August. It was a miracle that's the only way I can describe it but it was in so many ways a human-made miracle that was made possible by relentless, sustained advocacy by so many people in the democratic world. The situation with political prisoners in Russia today is no longer a crisis. It's a catastrophe. We have more political prisoners in Russia alone now than there were in the whole of the Soviet Union, so that's 15 countries put together. Towards this later period in the middle of the 1980s, in Putin's Russia, people are getting longer prison sentences for peacefully expressing their opinions than other people get for rape or murder or drug trafficking. This is the reality of Vladimir Putin's Russia today afterwards I caught up with journalist dawn Clancy again.
Speaker 5:I found this event to be incredibly informative and I did indeed learn loads of what I didn't know before about Russia torture. When you're here in New York, you're focused on the Security Council and everything's really, really political and you forget the people. But then when you have a side event, like we attended today, and you get to hear stories of people who were political prisoners and held in jails and then released, and you see the pain on their faces and you hear it in their voices that they're trying to make a difference, I mean that's really impactful. And I think that goes back to your question about UN and its relevancy. That is. One of the gems of the UN is that we can have events like that and people can come together in that humanitarian space and get regular people to talk about the impact of decisions that are being made at the UN or not being made at the UN and Security Council and how it impacts them.
Speaker 2:Do you think it's particularly important at this juncture for Russians, human rights defenders in Russia, to come across the pond to the United States and show this different picture A very repressive regime, not necessarily one you can easily do a deal with and the fact that there are still people, very different Russians, who are defending their human rights despite the huge risks to themselves?
Speaker 5:Absolutely, because in war, what's the first? They say it's what's the first casualty of war. Is the truth? Okay, that's absolutely the case here and it happens here at the UN and you get a very closed picture of what's happening.
Speaker 5:I, before I attended that event, I would not have known about these Russian lawyers and advocates who are fighting for people who are wrongfully in prison. I absolutely think that needs to be part of the conversation, and the reason it needs to be is because it's almost taboo to do so in the first place, to mention, while there's a war going on in Ukraine. Well, you know, there's also people on the Russian side who are struggling. The more we have those conversations, the more people will get used to it and maybe we can work with that taboo a little bit. But it is a bit frustrating, even as a journalist, because you have to walk a line. Well, if I bring this up about, why are you talking about Russia? You know they invaded Ukraine, you know. But Russia is a country, it's people. That's where all the stories are, that's where all the shading is.
Speaker 2:But it's not just the lack of nuance in our understanding of what's happening in Russia. That's a challenge for Russian human rights defenders hoping for support here in New York Over the next 48 hours, there's a packed programme at the UN. The Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine will deliver its report to the General Assembly, which will also hear multiple reports on the Middle East. I've literally just bumped into Navi Pile, former UN Human Rights Commissioner and now the chair of the inquiry team for Israel and the occupied territories. All this is likely to suck attention away from people, courageous though they are, who come from a country many diplomats here view themselves at war with. Let's talk to Human Rights Watch's Louis Charbonneau again.
Speaker 4:Russian human rights defenders need to be supported, they need to be nurtured and there needs to be attention to the work they're doing. It takes so much courage to be a human rights defender in Russia and even outside Russia, because we have seen this increasing phenomenon of transnational repression, where it is no longer enough to cross the border from a country where the government might try to put you in prison or torture you or even murder you right. So Russia has already proven that it is willing to go abroad and hunt people down, so people who are willing to go out publicly and talk about the situation that they're facing inside Russia, where it has really become just increasingly a full-blown authoritarian state. It's really great that they had a chance to have a platform.
Speaker 2:And yet in the same 48 hours there was also the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. There's the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, there's Navi Pile, who I ran into yesterday, commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Territories. So there's this big competition for attention in some of them and I felt a little bit with the Russian one not really getting the attention they might actually need.
Speaker 4:Yeah, one thing that I wish they didn't do it like this, where they have all of these human rights bodies, mechanisms showing up at the same time. They're only 24 hours in a day and eight, nine hours in a workday, and you can only schedule so many press conferences and journalists and diplomats can only go to so many. We shouldn't have them all at the same time. It would be great if they could stagger them so that we could have a week with the Russian human rights defenders and Russian human rights experts, a week to talk to the ones who are focusing on what's happening inside Ukraine, then a week to focus on what's happening in Israel, Palestine but unfortunately I'm not the one who's scheduling these things and they cram it all into one very short period and it's just not fair.
Speaker 2:Still into this competitive environment goes Mariana Katsarova. She's just about to head into the General Assembly now to present her report on torture in Russia. But I've managed to catch up with her.
Speaker 3:I think it's more difficult to get the human rights message here in New York at the General Assembly, but I'm having my interactive dialogue with states today so hopefully you know we will be heard. I always say to member states in Geneva please brief your counterparts, engage them better, because it's the same member states but with a different level of understanding for human rights here in New York, the delegations and in Geneva, where they're experts of course in Geneva because they deal with the Human Rights Council issues. So I think the connection between New York and Geneva has to be strengthened.
Speaker 2:What would you like the General Assembly to do? I mean, what would be the best outcome once you've spoken to them?
Speaker 3:Well, I hope that, first of all, in any other resolutions or decisions the General Assembly will be taking on connected to either the war against Ukraine or the Russian Federation itself, that they take into account my reports and my recommendations itself. That they take into account my reports and my recommendations, they take into account the situation with human rights and, again, given that the experts of the member states are at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, I'm really hoping that it will be able to, first of all, get their attention, but also they'll be using it and they will be pushing the agenda of putting pressure on the Russian authorities to comply with their own obligations to the UN, to the international standards, to the UN conventions. That's very important because there cannot be, you know, for peace and security, human rights is the core. Without human rights, we cannot have peace or security. And this is what New York discusses in the General Assembly. It's protecting the peace and the security.
Speaker 1:It's so nice to see you you too.
Speaker 2:Peace and security. How wonderful if the UN could really safeguard those things for all of us, but right now it's not doing too well, unfortunately. In this episode we've tried to explore why that might be from the power games and paralysis of the UN Security Council to an over-simplistic black-and-white view of the UN Security Council, to an oversimplistic black and white view of the world. Just this morning, to Mariana Katsarova's dismay after all her hard work, the New York Times carried an article about Russian torture in Ukraine, with no mention of the brutal repression faced by human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers inside Russia itself. It's been interesting to see the similarities and differences between Geneva and New York the same slightly bureaucratic atmosphere, the same soulless UN cafes, the same rigorous security, but over here more global politics and less detail and focus on human rights. We hear a lot these days about how dysfunctional the UN is, how bloated, how ineffective and, frankly, five days in New York has reminded me of all those things, of all those things. But then I see the hope on the faces of those young Russians who have suffered terrible abuse and have come all the way here looking for support. We need an effective UN to address that and so many other global challenges.
Speaker 2:The UN is made up of its member states. They make the policy, they decide. They appoint people like Mariana Katsarova to scrutinise human rights in Russia or Navi Pile to investigate the situation in Israel and the occupied territories. They do their work. They bring in-depth reports to the UN. The least member states can do, I think, is listen, understand and then hopefully act, and that's it from this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Louis Charbonneau, mariana Katsarova and Dawn Clancy. We hope you enjoyed our New York adventure.
Speaker 2:Next time we'll be in Strasbourg, where the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights is marking 25 years. It's a body that works closely with UN human rights and, as some listeners may know, switzerland currently holds the position of Secretary General at the Council. We'll be there for a very special debate, standing up for human rights in challenging times. Do join us then. And for now, thanks for listening to Inside Geneva. 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.
