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
How has the world changed in 2024? UN correspondents look back
In this week’s Inside Geneva episode, UN correspondents in Geneva and New York look back at 2024.
Dorian Burkhalter, journalist, SWI swissinfo.ch: ‘Wars everywhere, climate change, deepening inequalities, AI…it’s just threats everywhere. But it just seems like the more global our problems are becoming, the weaker the UN is also becoming.’
But is the biggest event of the year the US election?
Nick Cumming-Bruce, contributor, New York Times: ‘It’s hard to top the US election because it’s already dominating the conversation on everything else that we’ve covered in 2024.’
What could an isolationist America first strategy mean for the UN, and for the multilateral system?
Dawn Clancy, UN correspondent, New York: ‘Pulling out of the Paris Agreement, or the WHO, threatening to cut funding, the US is the biggest funder of the UN, billions of dollars. So it’s just going to be chaos and no leadership.’
Are we on the verge of a new world order, without the guardrails of international law, or the Geneva Conventions?
Imogen Foulkes, host, Inside Geneva: ‘The world is changing, while I’m watching, in terms of our fundamental principles, the world is changing while I’m watching, and for a while I didn’t even quite notice it.’
Join us on Inside Geneva for an in-depth discussion of 2024, and some predictions for 2025.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang
This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen Foulkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland. In today's programme… Rheignones in southern Gaza.
Speaker 1:A wave of Russian missile strikes on cities across Ukraine.
Speaker 3:Wars everywhere, climate change, deepening inequalities, ai it's just threats everywhere, but it seems like just the more global. Our problems are becoming, the weaker the UN is also becoming. Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly.
Speaker 1:Pulling out of Paris Agreement or the WHO threatening to cut funding. The US is the biggest funder of the UN billions of dollars so it's just going to be chaos and no leadership.
Speaker 3:The Fox News decision desk can now officially project that Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States.
Speaker 4:It's hard to top the US election because it already you know. Here we are two weeks later and it's already dominating pretty much the conversation on everything else that we've covered in 2024. Israel and its biggest ally, the United States, again isolated, furiously attacking the International Criminal Court's decision to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant.
Speaker 2:The world is changing while I'm watching, in terms of our fundamental principles. The world is changing while I'm watching, and for a while I Geneva and it being December, it's time for our look back at the year. That was 2024, and we know it hasn't been exactly fantastic, but don't switch off, keep listening, because we've got UN correspondents in Geneva and in New York to provide some analysis, reflection and, if we dare, a look ahead to what 2025 might have in store. A warm welcome to you all. We have here Dorianne Burkhalter, geneva UN correspondent with Swiss Info. We have over in New York, dawn Clancy, who covers the United Nations and its political arm over in the Big Apple, and back here in Geneva we have Nick Cumming-Bruce, contributor to the New York Times On All Things UN Geneva.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start with it could be quite a difficult question, but I would like you to try and get into it. Is there a moment or an event in 2024 that particularly stood out for you? I know there have been many, but, dorian, I'm going to come to you first with that question.
Speaker 3:If I had to pick just one, I think it would be the US election, donald Trump being elected for a second mandate, because otherwise I was thinking about our discussion from last year. And I mean, there's still a war in Ukraine, there's still a war in the Middle East, in Sudan, and I think some of the things we're seeing. You know that humanitarians are under attack, civilians too, that we need more access, international law being violated. These things haven't changed.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I mean. I think none of us are going to disagree that that first week of November was quite momentous Dawn. What about you over in New York?
Speaker 1:Well, to get a bit more specific, it has to do with the Israeli ambassador, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, gilad Adan. He's now left that post and it's Danny Dannen who's taken his post as the Israeli ambassador to the UN. But back to Ambassador Adan. He was giving a speech in the General Assembly and he brought with him a mini shredder and he began to shred pages of the UN charter and of course he was saying a lot of things around that about how horrible the UN is and it's just, you know, full of anti-Semitism rot. But to me that moment I just thought, wow, here's a member state I mean, there's a lot worse happening in the world but here's a member state standing in front of, you know, the General Assembly and he's actually shredding pages of the charter. And, yeah, I thought that pretty much sums up the year, nick.
Speaker 4:It's hard to top the US election because it already you know. Here we are two weeks later and it's already dominating pretty much the conversation on everything else that we've covered in 2024. But I suppose if one looks back before that, from the work that we have done in Geneva, I can't find a single incident like Dawn's that graphically illustrates the kind of coverage.
Speaker 4:But it would have to be something to do with Gaza, because of the absolutely relentless flow of just appalling developments that have occurred since October the 7th, and the sense in which everything just continues to get worse. You don't think it can, but it continues to do so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do want to come on to the US presidential election a little bit later in the programme. I think I want to join Dawn and Nick in saying that it is the Middle East, not necessarily one particular event, and I know, of course, it started in October 2023. And, as Dorian says, has been going on all of 2024. But my feeling, listening to people I've known for a decade or more, who are aid workers, who have been to Gaza and come back, and watching them plead for humanity, and listening to some of them weep, and then talking to diplomats, particularly Western diplomats, who are just so uncomfortable with this topic, and that's when I just began to think, you know, actually the world is changing while I'm watching, in terms of our fundamental principles, the world is changing while I'm watching and for a while I didn't quite even notice it. And I think, dawn, your image of an ambassador shredding the UN Charter in the General Assembly is the absolute, perfect image for that, which brings me to my next question when are we with the UN? Is it dead? Is it?
Speaker 1:relevant. It's interesting because this question has been asked repeatedly, especially when the war in Ukraine started, because the Security Council was so deadlocked in being able to pass resolution. Obviously because P5 members have a veto, russia has a veto. So all of the coverage of the UN was basically is the UN still relevant? Is it going to crumble and fall into the East River?
Speaker 1:And whenever this question comes up in the noon briefing at New York, the spokesperson for the Secretary General, steph Dujarric, he always says if you're going to ask me a question about the UN, you're going to have to get specific about which UN you mean. So if we're talking about the Security Council, I would say yeah, they've got problems. If you're talking about, like, the Secretariat and the administration administrative end of it, sure, but I think you know. Speaking about humanitarian workers, you know that being a part of the UN, these people that go into these conflict zones and they just work so hard and they risk their lives that part of the UN I could say today is quite admirable. I think that's a plus for the UN. But the political side is, yeah, it's like an earthquake at this point and we don't really know how this is going to all settle down.
Speaker 2:So I would argue and this is where I would like Dorian and Nick from the Geneva side to give me some thoughts on this that where we've moved from this time last year when we talked, is that the Security Council was deadlocked. Then we saw, as you said, in Ukraine. But we've moved a step on where the fundamental principles of international law are being really blatantly defied. And now we see, for example, the suggestion, which is precedent setting, that a UN member state will deny a UN agency, unrwa, the right to work, and to me that calls into question the relevance of the UN's humanitarian wing in Geneva as well and whether it has a future.
Speaker 4:Well, in a sense the humanitarian side, as Dawn said, is the one that has really been where you peg your hopes, because the Security Council has been so paralyzed by geopolitical rivalries and it's unable to fulfill its main function, which is trying to help keep peace in the world.
Speaker 4:So you tend to look for the work of the WFP and the refugee agency human rights organization, you look at the Human Rights Council in Geneva as organizations which hold up some hope of humanity and where you think you know non-political principles are still valued and elevated as something that we should strike for.
Speaker 4:The problem is that I think Volker Turek put it extremely well in October when he issued this statement, saying the international rule of law is being progressively dismantled, and he was speaking specifically about Gaza. But when the principles that are being trashed in the conflict in Gaza do not result in sanctions from leading Western democracies, then you have to say double standards are replete and we see the US position on Ukraine not being reflected in any way in its positions on Gaza. We see the US consistently failing to recognize how its continued flow of arms has essentially enabled the continuation of violations of international humanitarian law on an epic scale. So I think we're all at sea, and this is before the onset of a Trump administration which has appointed a number of people to key positions who have indicated that human rights, international human rights, law and principles are absolutely of no significance.
Speaker 2:Dorian.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree with the Security Council. Of course we know it isn't working, so we're looking at humanitarian aid for things that are actually working. But I mean, humanitarians also depend on the decisions of governments and I think, whether it's funding, we see that it's always lacking for most crises everywhere, and then access is being denied. Humanitarian aid is being instrumentalized. I mean, this is also a very worrying trend and even though this is not new, I think here the Israeli ban on UNRWA is quite unprecedented to have a parliament ban a UN agency like this. So it is worrying.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm beginning to wonder if I mean we always talk about New York, the Security Council, geneva, the humanitarian agencies, but the humanitarian agencies are paying the price of the utter failure of the Security Council. I mean, we've got of the P5, we now have one whose leader has been indicted for war crimes, that's Russia. One whose leader has been indicted for war crimes, that's Russia. We have another who is the subject of very, very concerning reports and allegations of crimes against humanity on its own territory, that's China. And now we have the United States, with the new administration returning, apparently very isolationist, not especially interested in international law. I suspect We'll come on to that in a minute. Could we drill a little deeper what the humanitarian side of the UN can actually do about this? No money, no real support and papering over these gaping wounds that the failure of political will has created over these gaping wounds that the failure of political will has created.
Speaker 1:Before he left office, martin Griffiths, he gave a briefing in New York and you could tell that he was just so frustrated and so fed up with everything that was happening. And he said you know, humanitarian agencies they tend to stay away from the political and he's like I think it's time for humanitarian agencies to get political. And that really struck me because I thought, yeah, it's absolutely true. You know, you ask any humanitarian agency a question about something that's mildly political and that's not my mandate. That's not my mandate. I can't talk about that. But you know I've thought about that, even after he left his post just what that would mean. And is that necessary? Is that the necessary next step for humanitarian agencies to start getting political and start taking, you know, a step towards that? I don't know.
Speaker 2:So I mean Martin Griffiths is the former head of emergency relief chief, the head of OCHA, been replaced by Tom Fletcher now, who's also supposed to be a very strong character. I've heard from people who know him who described it as a very brave move on his part to even take that job, because they think there's so little respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. But for Nick and Dorian, the idea of the humanitarian agencies becoming political is tricky though, isn't it Because they have this mantra of neutral, impartial, independent. What we've seen in Geneva is actually they've gone pretty quiet this year, particularly the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's difficult for them to get too political when they're dependent on governments for funding. Part of the problem with the paralysis and security council level in a multipolar world now is that multilateral solutions are less and less appealing to large numbers of states. Martin Griffith also, before he left, said you know, the multilateral system still works well, that the international aid community is much more efficient now than it used to be, that it does the job much better. But it's just the epic size of the humanitarian challenges that it's being asked to deal with are not being supported by donor states, and so what we see is that I mean more and more governments put money into things on a unilateral basis. Ocha's SURF fund, the emergency fund, is a good kind of barometer of that, and you see China gives half a million dollars. I mean derisory sums of money. The top five donors are all European sums of money. The top five donors are all European, so the European aid givers remain, but the rest of the world is sort of scattering and doing its own thing.
Speaker 2:Dorian, I saw you nodding there.
Speaker 3:No, exactly, that's actually also what I was going to say. I think of course it is hard for humanitarian organizations to be more political and I think recently, but it's hard for me to tell whether that's new or not but I feel like they are saying things quite clearly when it comes, for example, with them being sort of instrumentalized, you know when there's misinformation about them. But I think certainly they would need to encourage more governments to provide funding because in the end, if it's just the big Western countries, that does not make things easier for them.
Speaker 2:Since you talked about funding, let's hone in specifically on the US presidential election and the appointments, because the US, of course, is a massive donor at the moment to United Nations. Now should we read the tea leaves a little bit Donald Trump's appointments. Let's look at the Middle East first. What do we think? I think this. I mean I personally think his choice for ambassador to the United Nations, his choice for ambassador to Israel looked like. As far as the US is concerned, any idea of a two-state solution is over.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with that. You know you brought up his choice for ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik. She describes herself as ultra-MAGA make America great again, which I guess is Trump's party, or cult, or whatever you want to call it I don't know if that's appropriate to say cult and she is severely pro-Israel and she has called out the United Nations for being anti-Semitic and being full of anti-Semitic rot, moral depravity, and she sounds just like Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danone. So it's worrisome to me because, like you said, it kind of makes it look like a two-state solution will be even farther, pushed back beyond the horizon as an option to answering this question, this Palestinian question.
Speaker 1:I was actually after Trump said that he was nominating her, Elise Stefanik, Ambassador Danone went on X and he congratulated her and I just kind of scrolled through the comments of that post to see what people were saying and there was one individual who said something to the effect of oh, this is perfect, Now Israel will have two ambassadors at the UN and I thought that kind of. I thought that really hit the point, at least with how I'm thinking. I thought, yes, right on, right there.
Speaker 2:Nick, what do you think? I mean? It's Huckabee, isn't it?
Speaker 4:Yes, Mike Huckabee.
Speaker 2:He's appointed to ambassador to Israel.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, this is a man who says there's no such thing as a West Bank and there is no such thing as settlements and who says that, you know, israel has the right to sort of control the whole of sort of Judea and Samaria. Then you've got, as Dawn has mentioned, the ambassador to the UN, who is rabidly pro-Israel. You could take also Pete Hegseth, the incoming if he's confirmed Secretary of Defense, who has also said that the US Army is the only sort of pro-Christian, pro-israeli army in the world. I mean, these statements all show very strong predilection for unqualified support for Israel, which it has taken on from in many ways, from the Biden administration.
Speaker 2:Leave aside, maybe, our own personal feelings of rights and wrongs in this conflict although I guess we agree that there have been very many wrongs by all parties the approach just feels to me as if it's going to store up more and more and more and more trouble and, in particular, humanitarian crises. I don't see a route to any kind of peace.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, president-elect Trump is going to bring peace to Ukraine, as we understand it. If he is going to apply the art of the deal to bringing peace to Ukraine, the question then is on what terms? And is it going to be on terms that somehow rein in the kind of aggressive politics that we've seen from Russia? Rein in the kind of aggressive politics that we've seen from Russia? Or is it going to be terms that ultimately surrender advantages to the Kremlin and therefore leaves the rest of Europe fearing what will come next?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this today and thinking you have this horrible slightly 1938, feel about it.
Speaker 4:You know, we got, got a deal, we have a piece of paper and then, a year later, if I could just add one other thought, and that is you know, we're very focused on Europe and Gaza and the Middle East, but I mean, what's also concerning to, perhaps, is the very stridently anti-Chinese line in DC andC, and tensions are ratcheting up in the Pacific area, and so does this very hawkish stand from a variety of people who have been nominated by Mr Trump to serve in his administration whether that's going to basically lead us into a much tenser, more conflict susceptible time in that area as well, or are we going to see that the new administration simply uses this for trade leverage?
Speaker 2:Well, we don't know. We're getting towards looking forward to 2025. Dorian, I wanted to ask you um being possibly the youngest person here oh, hey, now wait, a minute.
Speaker 1:Wait, I won't ask then don't ask, don't age it.
Speaker 2:I mean somebody um about your age. One of my fact said it's all right for you, you've had your day. I mean, when you look at the world, do you think, oh God, this is climate change, ukraine, the Middle East, sudan, possible trade war.
Speaker 3:It's totally overwhelming, I think. As you said, I mean it's wars everywhere. As you said, I mean it's wars everywhere, and I mean just recently, when you hear Vladimir Putin say that the conflict in Ukraine has become basically a global conflict. It's just super worrying. I mean as well as his saber rattling when it comes to nuclear weapons. And behind this, all you have climate change, deepening inequalities, ai. It's just threats everywhere. Yeah, I mean, the narrative usually is that we have those global problems, so we need global solutions, so we need the UN and a strong multilateral system. But it seems like just the more global our problems are becoming, the weaker the UN is also becoming. So no, I'm not too optimistic, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I was hoping to try and end this podcast on some moment of optimism. I might have one or two, but first let's have a little look at 2025 for the United Nations, because one point I wanted to bring in was again related to the US administration. Donald Trump everybody says he's very transactional, he's quite retributional, and I think we are looking at possibly getting out of the Paris Accord again, probably leaving the Human Rights Council, possibly leaving the World Health Organization and, if this isolationist posture remains, big, big funding cuts for UN bodies. The other thing somebody speculated to me the other day is that Cindy McCain, current head of the World Food Programme, will definitely be for the high jump because there's a lot of bad blood between the McCains and the Trumps, and that Trump will certainly want to replace the head of the World Food Programme with somebody more pliant.
Speaker 1:I think one of the points in what you're saying about Trump coming in, I guess one of the more disappointing things is that this isn't going to lead to any new kind of leadership at the UN. I think when you look at the Security Council, when you look at the UN as a whole, I think, you know, when you look at the Security Council, when you look at the UN as a whole and I don't mean to say this to say anything poorly about the Secretary General, antonio Guterres there's just no leadership. I'm not saying that there aren't leaders, but there's absolutely no leadership when you look at the P5. No leadership. It's like everybody's say although I've never read the books Lord of the Rings, everybody's obsessed with this ring and when they get the ring they start turning into these goblins and I just feel like the veto is like the ring that's the P5. They've all become warped and you know they're rusting away from the inside with this veto.
Speaker 1:So, looking ahead at 2025, I still think we're going to be lacking some major leadership and when Trump comes in, you know, comes back. I guess it's. I could see him, exactly as you said, emoji pulling out of these different you know, paris agreement or the WHO threatening to cut funding. Like you said, the US is the biggest funder of the UN billions of dollars so it's just going to be chaos and no leadership.
Speaker 2:Nick thoughts for 2025?.
Speaker 4:Struggling to come up with any particularly positive scenarios. We have the likelihood of an already weakened COP process being weakened further by American withdrawal. We've had progress in 2024 on preparation of a pandemic treaty, which was one area of positive development, if you like, but again we face the probability, I think, that the United States will not want to participate in taking that any further forward. We can only hope for a positive peace in Ukraine. Sudan seems to be almost beyond the reach of all the stakeholders at the moment, so it's very difficult to see how that's going on. Yeah, gaza that's still nowhere on the horizon and the whole day after the war scenario for Gaza is extremely bleak and absolutely no vision coming from any of the major powers. So, yeah, it's not a very bright and cheerful dawn of 2025.
Speaker 2:Dorian 2025.
Speaker 3:Dorian, yeah, like Don and Nick, I mean I fear that Trump will withdraw from UN organizations, from UN treaties. But maybe my hope is that actually he doesn't really care and that maybe the US foreign policy is a little more robust than we fear. Because I was talking to a former Swiss ambassador to the US recently and he thought that Donald Trump, behind the big statements, didn't necessarily or wasn't always this much against the UN and that then Joe Biden also, even though he returned to the WHO, to the Human Rights Council, wasn't necessarily always a fan of multilateralism when we think about the Middle East negotiations were outside of the UN. So maybe he doesn't really care about the UN and that leaves room for another kind of leadership. But that's probably just hopeful and then maybe concretely we can hope for a pandemic treaty this year or next year for good, maybe a plastic treaty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well then it has to be honoured, I suppose. But you're right, I mean pandemic treaty, plastic treaty, these are the little incremental of the Rings but that the other countries in the world, particularly in the global south, are so disenchanted with the way the P5 are behaving, and particularly what's happening in the Middle East, that they are losing faith with this multilateral system as well because of the double standards. Anyway, just a quick couple of predictions of mine for 2025. I think we might get a deal in Ukraine and we won't know for quite a while whether it's actually worked or not. It'll be something frozen where people will initially be a bit glad that people are not getting killed, but we won't know for a while whether it emboldens Russia or not. On the Middle East, I think there is terrible horrors in store still for Gaza, and I think history will judge all of us actually on this one in the end.
Speaker 2:But one hopeful, one tiny hopeful thing well, an encouragement I think Europe has to get its act together, has to stand up for itself, and I was in Strasbourg last week and what was quite heartening was they had a big session about 75 years of the Council of Europe 46 members supposed to be ensuring a rights-based Europe, you know, with values that you know the 1930s and 40s would never be repeated. And most of the people there were young people from across Europe, university students, and it was really interesting to hear about the work they were doing around human rights in Europe, around things like immigration, around climate change, and I just thought, well, at least there are still people like that around. And you had politicians from Europe who said I'm glad you're here to these young people. Hold our feet to the fire, we need it. So that is my motto for 2025. Hold their feet to the fire.
Speaker 2:And that's it from this edition of Inside Geneva. Thank you, nick Cumming-Bruce, dawn Clancy and Dorian Borkhalter. 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.
