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’s Summer Profiles: Stéphane Jaquemet
On World Humanitarian Day, Inside Geneva spoke to a man who has dedicated his life to humanitarian work. He grew up in a quiet Swiss village – so what inspired him to take this path?
“When I was young, I quickly realised that many people didn’t have the same opportunities, they didn’t have equal chances. And to me, that felt fundamentally wrong,” says humanitarian worker Stéphane Jaquemet.
His first posting was to Gaza in the 1980s.
“Gaza was already in a bad state at the time. I think there were nightly curfews and raids by the Israeli army. They would break into homes and mainly arrest young people,” he says.
Then came the 1990s and the conflict in Yugoslavia.
“A conflict in the middle of Europe: I don’t think we were ready for that, or for witnessing the same kinds of violations. It was a truly horrific conflict; we saw real ethnic cleansing.”
Aid workers today face big challenges and serious personal risks. Yet Jaquemet remains committed. “I would encourage young people to remain interested in humanitarian work, ” he says.
Would he do it all again? “Yes, I would. I’m still motivated.”
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Fowkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 3:In today's program when I was young, I very quickly realized that there were many, many people who did not have this equal opportunity, who did not have equal chances, and for me that was fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1:The Israelis claim that Gaza has been quiet for the last few years because they rounded up or drove out all the active Palestinian guerrillas.
Speaker 3:In the mid-80s. Gaza was already bad at that time. There were curfew every night. There were raids by the Israeli army. They would break into houses, arrest mainly young people, the young people.
Speaker 4:In Yugoslavia, an EC-led convoy heading for the besieged town of Vukovar has come under mortar fire.
Speaker 3:The idea that we would have a conflict in the middle of Europe. I think we're not ready for that and we're not ready to see the violation. So it was a very awful conflict. We had a real ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 4:The Serbs conquered several areas of Croatia, notably bordering on Bosnia. Here was the self-declared Republika Srpska Krajina.
Speaker 3:I think that was for me. The exact definition of the humanitarian work is that you are dealing with incredible violation, but you can still do something to help and support.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Folks, and today we bring you the fifth in our series of summer profiles. A few weeks ago, we brought you an aid worker who is in Gaza right now. Today we'll talk to someone who started his career as an aid worker in Gaza 40 years ago. A lifetime's work for humanitarian organisations followed in all sorts of different places.
Speaker 3:I'm Stéphane Jacquemé and I'm currently working for the International Catholic Migration Commission, ICMC, as a Chief Operating Officer, but before that I worked 25 years for UNHCR and five years for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Speaker 2:So really a life's work in the humanitarian sector.
Speaker 3:Something like 40 years.
Speaker 2:yes, what did you think when you were a child? What was it like when you were growing up? Is that something you always wanted to do?
Speaker 3:I was born in Switzerland, in the Canton du Valais, in a small town called Saint-Maurice. My parents had a small grocery shop. They were not rich, but they were, let's say, ambitious. They wanted their children to study not to become rich, but to study. They wanted us to have a better future than themselves, and I think that was really very, very, very important for me. For me, and despite the fact that my parents were not rich, I was able to study first high school and then university. Of course, my parents invested in it, but there was also a system which basically gave equal opportunity to all the children, and I think I was really when I was young, I very quickly realized that there were many, many people who did not have this equal opportunity, who did not have equal chances, and for me, that was fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 2:You went to university in Switzerland, yeah, and that was when you thought I'd like to be a humanitarian worker yes. How did that happen exactly?
Speaker 3:I mean, I studied law and just realized through my law studies that in reality not everyone was equal before the law, that inequality was part of what we have in almost every single society. Probably quite a bit better in Switzerland than in other countries, but even in Switzerland I saw people who were marginalized and I found that not right, that we had to do something about it and that if I had the privilege to be able to study, to be successful in my studies. But I believe that if you are privileged, one of your responsibility is to support and help the people who are less privileged.
Speaker 2:But your first posting was Gaza, that's quite a difference, switzerland to Gaza.
Speaker 3:It's very, unfortunately, very, very different. And that was 40 years ago, in the mid 80s, and Gaza was already bad. At that time there were curfew every night. There were raids by the Israeli army. They would break into houses, arrest mainly young people.
Speaker 4:Israelis are not going to pull out. That's the point. There's no chance of the inhabitants of Gaza having their freedom to do anything.
Speaker 1:The Israelis are worried that without their army here, the Palestine Liberation Organization will be back in strength.
Speaker 3:But what shocked me was that very often they would humiliate elderly people in front of young people and of course, the young people were arrested. Icrc at that time I was working for ICRC. At that time ICRC was the first organization to have access to the people under interrogation. That was two weeks after the arrest. Most of the people had been beaten up and they were really in a very bad shape. But it was very important to be the first contact with these people and then, immediately after seeing the detainees, we would visit the family and of course, this first meeting with the family was something very, very special. It was extremely emotional. I mean, the families were extremely upset, but the idea that we had seen their children was so important for them. So I think that was for me, the exact definition of the humanitarian work is that you are dealing with incredible violation but you can still do something to help and support.
Speaker 2:And when you look at Gaza now what do you think Just awful?
Speaker 3:I mean, look at the number of deaths on every single day, look at the number of violations, look at what almost 60,000 people killed, and what I find shocking is, generally speaking, the lack of reaction of the international community. It's probably even more shocking than the violations.
Speaker 2:When you were there 40 years ago. I mean, this is perhaps hindsight, but you talk about a community which was disrespected, I guess to a point where violations could take place easily. Could you have predicted what's happening now?
Speaker 3:I don't think we could predict the level of violations that we have today, but I think we could predict that things would just get worse. So when you have a pattern of violations and it just continues and there is no real accountability for those violations, where you had more decent political parties in power, but that those more decent political parties had a pattern of violations, what would happen if you had other political parties? Couldn't care less about even their own reputation. So yeah, I think we could at that time predict that the situation would deteriorate. I don't think that everyone would have expected to reach the point where we are today.
Speaker 2:Gaza is, of course, the conflict that everybody is talking about, sometimes to the neglect of other conflicts, and you, of course, have been posted to many conflict and crisis zones, to many conflict and crisis zones. You were also in former Yugoslavia, which interests me because I actually also, as starting out in my career, spent some time there and also found it quite something that I don't forget, because we moved from this hope of Europe in 1989 to war quite quickly. Tell me about your experience there.
Speaker 3:Yes, I was posted in Krajina, which was the part of Croatia which at that time was basically controlled by Serbian militias, and I stayed there one year and I think it was indeed a very, very difficult situation. It was the first conflict in Europe after World War II.
Speaker 1:Astonishingly, on the Croatian side, civilians are still up there with the soldiers either unable to leave their homes or trying to get back to them.
Speaker 4:Croatian President, franjo Tudjman, together with military leaders, launched Operation Storm to rid Krajina of Serbs.
Speaker 3:And I think I had been posted in the Middle East, in Africa, and then just the idea that we would have a conflict in the middle of Europe was, I think we're not ready for that and we're not ready to see the exactly the same kind of violation. So it was a very awful conflict. We had a real ethnic cleansing. I mean the expression ethnic cleansing was applied to the conflict in former Yugoslavia. I don't know whether it was the first time, but at least it was really a kind of defining the conflict. Again, it was a conflict where there were many, many violations, but there was also the feeling as a humanitarian actor that there was something that could be done. We were not able to address most of the violations, but I think we were able to support people and to empower a number of the refugees in particular.
Speaker 2:Did that give you comfort at the time? Because I have quite a few colleagues in journalism and in the humanitarian sector who came out of the wars in former Yugoslavia quite traumatised and quite frustrated that they went either to report on atrocities and think that this might help or to try to bring humanitarian relief and found themselves actually virtually helpless.
Speaker 3:You know, I guess it also depends on where you were posted. I mean, for people who were posted, for example, in Sarajevo, there was indeed frustration about convoys not being able to have access to the population in Bosnia, Several convoys were delayed, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:He says you don't have permission to travel this way, tell him I don't need his permission. He wants to check your vehicle.
Speaker 4:No, he's not checking my vehicle. Un. The refugees came through in 11 covered trucks. One truck was full of wounded. It went straight to the hospital, the doctors stunned by what they found inside.
Speaker 3:Some convoys were targeted, some of the drivers were wounded, etc. Etc. So I guess that the people who were in Sarajevo were indeed deeply frustrated, and I had other colleagues who were even more traumatized. Those were the people who were, for example, in a place like Banja Luka, where they were the witnesses of ethnic cleansing without any possibility to support them.
Speaker 3:Krajina was a bit of a forgotten part of former Yugoslavia. There was not much reporting about it. There were indeed violations. I would not say that we were successful all the time, but there was, let's say, at least some willingness from the part of the de facto authorities there to at least facilitate some of our work. So I would say you know, humanitarian work you can be, and in that sense I feel that I was privileged all my career because I was never posted in a place where I had the impression that I was unable to do my job, my job with limitation, my job with failure, etc. But there was still the possibility to influence the authorities and to be able to provide support to most of the people. By definition, humanitarian work has failures, has frustration work has failures, has frustration.
Speaker 2:You have been posted in many different places. Is there one place, event, that really stands out, that you don't forget or can't forget?
Speaker 3:Nepal. Nepal was maybe the most positive one in the sense that we had a large camp population of Bhutanese who had been 15 years without any hope to return, any hope of resettlement In the past decade, tens of thousands of Bhutanese have escaped what they claim to be tyranny, torture and ethnic cleansing.
Speaker 1:The government's clampdown sparked an exodus from the kingdom to refugee camps in Nepal In the early 90s.
Speaker 2:tens of thousands left, most not by choice.
Speaker 3:And suddenly a US official visited Nepal and basically offered resettlement to the government of Nepal and to UNHCR the government of Nepal and to UNHCR and after back sound force, it was decided that the resettlement program for Nepalese would start.
Speaker 3:And then, during the time I was UNHCR representative in Nepal, we managed to resettle over 50,000 Bhutanese to the US, but also to Australia, canada, the Nordic countries, and it has been a remarkable resettlement program with a very large number of the people being able to start really a new life, to have jobs, et cetera, et cetera. It's a population, very resilient population. As soon as we started the resettlement program, they all switched off, they all started to learn English. Well, that was remarkable. I mean, six months later almost the entire camp population was speaking English, including the elderly. So I mean that was just remarkable. And you know, resettlement is something so positive. There are failures, there are people who cannot adjust, there are people who have difficulties, but I would say, largely you go from a camp situation where you really don't have any hope of any form of integration, into really providing real opportunities.
Speaker 2:You speak about that program of resettlement as one of the most positive memories you have of your career, and yet this kind of program is scarcely happening anymore. The United States has completely stopped its resettlement program In Europe. You know the narrative around migration, refugees and asylum seekers is almost uniformly negative, and you spent 25 years working for the UN Refugee Agency. What do you think about the way the debate around this seems to have shifted?
Speaker 3:It's extremely sad and it could have been avoided. I believe All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.
Speaker 1:Anyone who comes here illegally should be deported within hours and days, not weeks and months. That is the will of the British people.
Speaker 3:I mean the problem. If we talk about migration generally speaking, today, the narrative around migration is not influenced. It's dictated by the far right. You don't see other political parties coming with a different narrative. They just respond sometimes and I would say most of the time very weakly to the narrative of the far right. And this is, in my view, the major problem as long as we will not have a different narrative and this narrative should be realistic, it should be based on facts, it should be based on what migration is. Migration brings incredible opportunities, but also challenges, and I think it's important to acknowledge that they are both opportunities and challenges. But when you talk to experts, including experts who are leaning towards the right, they will all agree that the way migration is being handled by the far right or by other political party influenced by the far right is wrong. It doesn't work. But you know, when you then talk about the cost of living and then you convince people that their cost of living is impacted because of foreigners or migrants, then I think this is always the twist that you have with.
Speaker 3:You know the far right narrative and you know, when I was UNHCR representative for Southern Europe and I was, in particular, covering Italy and I was based in Rome. One day I was invited by a small NGO saying do you want to come to a discussion debate in a municipality in northern Italy and this municipality is controlled by the Lega the far right and I was a little bit hesitant. I discussed with my colleagues should I go, should I not go? In the end I took the decision to go and of course I was in a kind of in a room where there were 200 people. It was obviously not the most friendly environment. I said I think can we agree on some rules that I will respect you but you will also respect me? So I let you talk and you let me talk. Then it was agreed.
Speaker 3:And the conversation started with immigration, refugees etc. And then we just realized that these specific municipalities had been completely abandoned by the authorities that people had. They were not flooded by migrants and refugees. Some people had never met a refugee or a migrant, but they were absolutely convinced that most of their problems was because of migrants or refugees. In reality, there were no jobs. The policy of the government which was to support small enterprises, small businesses, had failed, that there was corruption, that if you wanted a job you needed to know someone. All that had nothing to do with migrants and refugees. But of course, it was much easier to say your problem is refugees and migrants. And we ended up having a good dialogue, a good discussion. I'm not sure that that specific dialogue had a major impact, but it also showed that there is a possibility. But that needs to be replicated several times and you need leadership among the opposition, among the other political parties, to really dare to speak up and to have a different narrative and not to just have the kind of same policies as the far right.
Speaker 2:Very interested that you mentioned there speaking up and you're referring to political leaders over the question of immigration. But I also wonder, because at the beginning you also mentioned the silence over Gaza. Your profession is traditionally neutral, impartial, to allow aid workers to work wherever and have some protection, have trust, but do you think that there are occasions, given the world we're looking at now, where humanitarian leaders also need to speak out?
Speaker 3:Of course, I still believe that there are a lot of merits to be neutral, impartial, etc. Etc. And that a discreet dialogue with the authorities in a number of circumstances is very, very important. If you openly criticize the authorities, you may lose a bit of leverage to obtain more from the same authorities, but that will apply only if you are dealing with authorities where there is still a minimum of decency. When you have lost that kind of decency and Gaza is a very good example I don't think there is any decency in the Netanyahu government, I think in that kind of situation, I think it is the responsibility of humanitarian actors, and not only of human rights actors, to speak up.
Speaker 2:You have really spent your life working in this sector. But now here we are in 2025, the world does look quite bleak. We're seeing big funding cuts to humanitarian work. We've seen, particularly in the Middle East, a brutal year for aid workers.
Speaker 3:So many have been killed. If you were talking to your own 20-something self back in the 1980s, somebody now who international organizations like UNHCR, icrc a little bit less, but IOM, for example, is the case losing between 25 and 50 percent of their funding. So today we have thousands of humanitarian workers being laid off and looking for a job. So it means that the competition in the humanitarian field is really very, very, very. I think it's a very sad situation. So I would say you are a young guy, you are motivated, you want to have an impact, you want to be able to fight for a better world. It's very complicated and your chances to get a job is really minimal. So that's the reason for my no. The yes is because I believe that, in spite of what happened with is because I believe that, in spite of what happened with the US cuts, with what we see in terms of disrespect for the rule of law, etc. We are in a very negative situation.
Speaker 3:At the same time, I belong to the generation who started humanitarian work before the fall of the Berlin Wall and we also realized that in the I started in the mid 80s, in the mid and late 80s, but also before you had the Cold War, you had guerrillas being financed and basically these guerrillas not only were financed, but basically whatever violation they would commit would be tolerated. So it was the end of a very negative cycle and then, I would say, in the 90s, 2000, 2010, we saw a lot of improvement. There was really a belief in human rights. So I would say, based on the fact that maybe I started in the late 80s and that I witnessed I wouldn't say the golden age of humanitarian work, but to some extent, some very positive development, including on the human rights side, I still believe that we will be able to see a new, more positive cycle and that's why I would encourage young people to remain interested in humanitarian work.
Speaker 2:And you'd do it all again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would, I would. I'm still motivated.
Speaker 2:And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Stéphane Jacquet for his time and his fascinating perspectives. After a lifetime in humanitarian work, Now about to take a well-earned retirement, we wish him all the very best for the future. Join us again next time on Inside Geneva where, ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York, we ask how the United Nations, now 80 years old, can reassert its relevance.
Speaker 5:We do sometimes forget that the UN still has 60,000 peacekeepers around the world. It's still running enormous humanitarian operations.
Speaker 2:So the UN is not dead but I think the UN is drifting. Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group brings us an in-depth assessment and warns of the risks of bypassing the UN.
Speaker 5:Donald Trump actually says that he wants the UN to focus back on peace and security. We prioritise global peacemaking, but the reality is that the US and other powers are not working through the UN on any of the big crises of the day, which leaves the UN with the crumbs.
Speaker 2:That's out on September 16th. Do join us, then. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. You can 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.
