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Philippe Stoll, the Red Cross’s ‘techplomat’, is Inside Geneva’s Summer Profile this week.
“I studied economics and I think I could have been a banker or something like that. A good Swiss indeed! But my mother was a volunteer at the Red Cross, and I think she influenced me a lot about maybe being human or taking care of humans,” he says. 
He’s helping the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) develop a new digital emblem to warn cyber warriors against attacking protected structures like hospital software, or confidential data.
“Cyber attacks are increasingly carried out by machines. It’s a machine talking to another machine, and this certificate is a way to identify something that the machine will understand and not attack.”
Such attacks are already happening.
“The ICRC suffered from a cyber attack in 2022. It’s not a question of if, it’s more question of when. We know that the ICRC has access to information that is highly interesting for state or non state armed groups,” says Stoll.
And they can cause enormous harm,
“[such as] the distress of people not being able to get the information online because it was hacked or the fact that some information might put your family or you at risk because you belong to a tribe or clan that is under attack.”
Join host Imogen Foulkes for an in-depth discussion – how do we uphold the Geneva Conventions in 21st-century wars?
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Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
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For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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Trish Newport of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Switzerland is Inside Geneva’s first summer profile this year.
“My grandma was a humanitarian she had worked in Malawi and I remember when I was about 10 years old she said to me, ‘When you grow up and you become a humanitarian, you should work for MSF because they really have strong values and ethics that you will appreciate,’” says Newport. 
Originally from Canada, she has worked all over the world, in the most challenging environments.
“I worked a lot in acute malnutrition response for a number of years, including in Niger. It’s hard to see, but you can really do something, for example a little malnourished child comes in and, if they get Plumpy Nut and proper care for six weeks, they become a fat little cute kid and they go home,” she says. 
Now she’s at the heart of MSF’s Ebola response, in Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“It’s not just an Ebola outbreak. It’s an Ebola outbreak in a context with massive humanitarian needs, that has high insecurity and where there’s ongoing conflict. We see the outbreak is starting to go into areas with high insecurity, where we hear about community deaths but you don’t have access to them, to be actually sampling to see if it’s Ebola or not, or to have a proper Ebola response.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) says this outbreak is spreading at record speed.
“A mother had her child, the child was sick, and then the mother died of Ebola. The grandmother took the baby, came to where our project is, and the grandmother died. The baby is now sick with Ebola, none of the family wants to come to the child because everyone that touches the child dies. It just breaks your heart,” says Newport. 
“And people here they are people and we are all humans and so I have a hard time understanding why we can’t connect that way,” she says. 
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva to listen to the full interview. 
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Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. 

For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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On Inside Geneva this week, we look at the race to be the next UN Secretary-General. Is it time for a change?
Susana Malcorra, candidate for UN Secretary-General 2016: 'I am deeply convinced this is a moment that requires a different type of leadership, and we have tested leadership nine leaders throughout 80 years that were all men.'
Geneva recently hosted three of the candidates – we hear from them. What are their plans?
Rebeca Grynspan, candidate for Secretary-General: 'My criteria of success as secretary general is that nobody will ask me again: Where is the UN?' If that question continues we will be irrelevant.'
What are the UN's challenges?
María Fernanda Espinosa, candidate for Secretary-General: 'I think the UN does not suffer from a crisis of purpose or principles enshrined in the Charter. It suffers from a crisis of delivery of impact, of accountability, and of inclusion.'
And what does it still have to offer?
Michelle Bachelet, candidate for Secretary-General: 'Multilateralism has a lot of problems, but if you didn't have a multilateral system, children in the refugee camps wouldn't have vaccines. People displacement wouldn't have support. So there's a lot of things that multilateralism has done and we need to improve.'
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.
Get in touch!
Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. 

For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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This week, Inside Geneva presents the newest instalment of our “Books to make you think” series.
We talk to an author who had a ringside seat as the US development agency USAID was being destroyed.
“The people who so recklessly tore down the agency [...] are still sitting in high government positions and have not been held accountable for their actions, so I intentionally named names in the book and explained exactly who was responsible and why,” says Nicholas Enrich, author of Into the Wood Chipper.
“USAID was destroyed by people who really had no idea what they were doing, and because of the vindictive ego of Elon Musk,” continues Enrich.
And we hear about a forensic analysis of the language used by US media to report the war in Gaza.
“The New York Times referred to the killing of Israelis on October 7 as a ‘massacre’ 124 times, and a ‘slaughter’ 53 times. In the same time frame, they used similar language zero times to describe the killing of Palestinians, despite the fact that, in the first 100 days, the death toll was seven or eight times higher than on October 7. Zero, not once, did they describe anything Israel did to the Palestinians in that period as a massacre or a slaughter,” says Adam H. Johnson, author of How to Sell a Genocide.
Did the mainstream media sanitise war crimes?
“Do you think that it is possible Israel killed 20,000 children at least – that’s the official number that no one disputes – over two years and never once committed a massacre or a slaughter? Does that feel statistically likely to you? I think the answer is, on its face, ‘no’,” says Johnson.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.
Get in touch!
Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. 

For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang

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On our Inside Geneva podcast this week, we host a debate on a key question: what’s the point of foreign aid?
“What’s the point of mobilising taxpayers’ money and sending it to faraway countries to assist vulnerable people? And how do you sell that to your own taxpayers?” says Gilles Carbonnier, former Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
There are more conflicts and greater needs, yet donor countries want to spend less.
“What’s the point of mobilising taxpayers’ money and sending it to faraway countries to assist vulnerable people? And how do you sell that to your own taxpayers?” says Gilles Carbonnier, former Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
There are more conflicts and greater needs, yet donor countries want to spend less.
Do we think some people’s tragedies are less important than others?
If a child is in pain in Khartoum, that’s exactly the same as a child being in pain in New York or London. If a mother is grieving in Gaza, that’s exactly the same as a mother grieving in Geneva,” says Chris Lockyear, former Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
How can aid agencies better explain what they do?
“What defines us is humanity, and humanity means we cannot stay idle when we see others suffering. We have to act and do something to try to protect them, assist them and prevent suffering, regardless of where this happens,” says Carbonnier. 
Listen to the full episode on Inside Geneva.
Get in touch!
Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter. 

For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang