Here’s episode two of our summer profiles series on the Inside Geneva podcast. We talk to the head of one of the world’s leading humanitarian agencies. We start with his first assignment in Darfur, in western Sudan.
“As I was one day building the shelter I realised for the first time in many years I hadn't thought of what’s next? I wasn’t thinking everyday where do I go from here, what do I do, what’s my plan? I’d just been so absorbed in the work,” Chris Lockyear, Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told host Imogen Foulkes.
We also discuss the current crisis in Gaza, where, amid terrible destruction, MSF is providing medical care.
"What are we [on] now 37,000 people killed? It’s astonishing. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood after neighbourhood which has been completely flattened,” continues Lockyear.
In Gaza, MSF staff have met children as young as five, who said they wished to die.
“They've been going through this for months and months and months, and the brutality of what is happening, what they’re living through, yes, people are saying that they would rather end it than continue. And that can't be a surprise to us.”
MSF has been outspoken when it believes international law has been violated:
“What does it mean elsewhere? How could this be translated into other countries? Into Sudan, into the future if we can operate as a world with such impunity? Where does that leave us?” says Lockyear.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interview.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Here’s episode two of our summer profiles series on the Inside Geneva podcast. We talk to the head of one of the world’s leading humanitarian agencies. We start with his first assignment in Darfur, in western Sudan.
“As I was one day building the shelter I realised for the first time in many years I hadn't thought of what’s next? I wasn’t thinking everyday where do I go from here, what do I do, what’s my plan? I’d just been so absorbed in the work,” Chris Lockyear, Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told host Imogen Foulkes.
We also discuss the current crisis in Gaza, where, amid terrible destruction, MSF is providing medical care.
"What are we [on] now 37,000 people killed? It’s astonishing. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood after neighbourhood which has been completely flattened,” continues Lockyear.
In Gaza, MSF staff have met children as young as five, who said they wished to die.
“They've been going through this for months and months and months, and the brutality of what is happening, what they’re living through, yes, people are saying that they would rather end it than continue. And that can't be a surprise to us.”
MSF has been outspoken when it believes international law has been violated:
“What does it mean elsewhere? How could this be translated into other countries? Into Sudan, into the future if we can operate as a world with such impunity? Where does that leave us?” says Lockyear.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast to listen to the full interview.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
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 programme, as I was one day building this shelter, I realised for the first time in many years I hadn't had the thought of what's next. I wasn't thinking every day where do I go from here? What do I do? What's my plan? I had just been so absorbed in the work. What are we now? 37,000 people killed. It's astonishing. Neighbourhood after neighbourhood after neighbourhood which has been completely flattened. They've been going through this for months and months and months, and the brutality of what is happening and they're living through. Yes, people are saying that they would rather end it than continue, and that can't be a surprise to us. What does it mean elsewhere? What does it mean? How could this be translated into other countries, into Sudan, into the future? If we can operate as a world with such impunity, where does that leave us? It's despairing, it's humbling to be faced with the limits of what you can achieve on a daily basis, every day. I mean we're very lucky to have all the supporters that we do have, but it's a drop in the ocean.
Speaker 3:
It really is hello and welcome again to inside geneva. I'm imogen folks, and in today's program it's time for part two of our series of summer profiles, where we go to the headquarters, right here in geneva, of one of the world's most famous humanitarian agencies.
Speaker 2:
So my name is Chris Lockyer, I'm the Secretary General of MSF International and I help coordinate the medical humanitarian movement that is MSF. We're an organisation that works in over 70 countries providing medical assistance in conflict zones, after natural disasters and in epidemics, and I've been doing this now for almost 20 years. I started in 2005. I started working in Darfur during the Darfur crisis as a water and sanitation engineer. I have an engineering background.
Speaker 3:
So you're an engineer.
Speaker 2:
Was.
Speaker 3:
You were Tried to be no you're not. What motivated you to go into humanitarian work?
Speaker 2:
Well, I if I'm honest, I don't think I was ever a very good engineer or was ever cut out to be a very good engineer, but I think in there were a couple of things that that really motivated me in going into a humanitarian role, and they probably sound quite naive now after doing this job for 20 years. The first one was simply to help people that needed it most, if I could. And secondly because and this sounds a bit self-centred because it seemed like an exciting, a lot of exposure to interesting situations and people and cultures. Exciting, a lot of exposure to interesting situations and people and cultures. But if I'm honest with myself, those are the two reasons in which I started.
Speaker 2:
I had very little, if any, awareness as to humanitarian principles at that time. I had great respect for MSF as an organisation. I'd seen it on the news. I had a friend who had been on a field mission before me, who'd worked for the same engineering company as me, and come back and said, yep, I know you, this is the sort of work that you'd enjoy and that's how it started.
Speaker 3:
Was he right? Though your mate? I mean you went to Darfur challenging assignment what sticks with you. Were you shocked or you thought, yeah, this is what I expected. Well, I went to Darfur for six months and ended up staying for a year and a half, most of Darfur has been off limits to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1:
We're on our way to the border with Chad, to a village.
Speaker 2:
That's a perfect example of Darfur's problems. I was in a place called Kass in South Darfur where there was huge rates of malnutrition, and I had been there for about two weeks and was building a shelter for a feeding centre, and every day I was, I was learning about feeding programmes. I was learning also learning about community outreach and how we reach patients in the different camps and the different displaced people's camps and I, as I was one day building this shelter, I realised for the first time in many years I hadn't had the thought of what's next. I wasn't thinking every day where do I go from here? What do I do? What's my plan?
Speaker 2:
I'd just been so absorbed in the work for those first couple of weeks. At that moment I knew that this was long-term, that this was a commitment of mine and this was an area that I wanted to stay and work in because there was clearly so much to do. Yes, it was very it was. It was tough from a personal perspective, but also seeing that you could do something to help and you could see the impact made me realize that this was something I wanted to stay working on and learn more about.
Speaker 3:
Where have you been since since then?
Speaker 2:
After after working Darfur, I moved on to work in Somalia, trying to set up a cholera centre in Mogadishu.
Speaker 1:
Mogadishu was once one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but that was a long time ago. Once again, gun battles rage in war-torn Mogadishu. A fragile lull in the fighting, which had lasted two weeks, was broken on Friday as clashes resumed.
Speaker 2:
The experience in Somalia was very formative for me. I mean there was, at the same time, there being a cholera outbreak in Mogadishu being very intense, fighting. Our ability to move around was very restricted. We would take a vehicle to cross the road from our accommodation to the clinic that we were working in An attack on military posts south of Mogadishu Troops of Somalia's interim government backed up by Ethiopian forces.
Speaker 2:
It was in Mogadishu that I experienced what it felt like to be near a car bomb. The car bomb went off. After a couple of nights being there, just a couple of blocks away, and feeling the impact of that through the ground was something extraordinary. But also whilst working in Mogadishu, we were working with a population that tried to flee. People were trying to flee from Mogadishu, but they were besieged, and the fact that we could live in a world where people were so desperate that they would have to flee and leave their homes and their belongings and then, on top of that, couldn't flee sort of the terror on top of the terror, was something that I found incredibly difficult to get my head around, but realising it was very formative in terms of understanding the situations that many hundreds of thousands and millions of people around the world do live in.
Speaker 3:
Some people being posted somewhere and having a bomb go off right next to them a couple of days after they got there might kind of say actually, maybe I've changed my mind. This job's not for me and you didn't do that.
Speaker 2:
I didn't do that. Obviously, I took my own security very seriously. I took the security of team members very seriously. But when you're faced with that very acute, very visible need and you can do something about it, I mean sure it's higher risk than working in a bank somewhere in Europe. There have been a few situations where I've felt very scared, but at the same time there's a lot of people that need assistance and I think that that's very important, that there are people that try and give that assistance.
Speaker 1:
Schieffer Hospital is struggling to cope. Doctors there are waiting to take in the wounded and the dead that keep arriving here. People are terrified. They will tell you that they don't feel safe anywhere. Gaza, where innocent civilians who have nothing to do with terrorism are trapped with no way out.
Speaker 3:
Let's come up to date, then, because you were talking about people trying to flee but couldn't which we have the situation in the Middle East, in Gaza now. You have been very, very outspoken about that.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and there are several reasons for that. I think what we're seeing in Gaza is an exceptional conflict. There are so many things in my mind which are coming together, intersecting or something like this in Gaza that I think that we need to be very outspoken about it is, as you say, a population that is besieged. They're besieged and bombed. They are within that enclave. They are told to move from place to place, often with very short notice. There's nowhere safe for them to go, and we have staff members who have been still trying to provide medical assistance and have moved four or five times and are still losing family.
Speaker 2:
We have staff members who have been still trying to provide medical assistance and have moved four or five times and are still losing family members because of the bombing that is going on. So that's a truly horrific situation. Having been there, seen places like Al-Aqsa Hospital, where there's patients desperately waiting for time in the operating theatre for dressings to be changed. There's no space in that hospital and it's got much worse since I've left. The health structure has been completely demolished. Hospitals have been completely demolished. It really poses the question how, as a humanity, or how as a people, can we allow this to happen?
Speaker 1:
Eight members of Fatih Ismail's family are injured. There were 22 of us in our house. They bombed behind the house and my house collapsed all over us. There was shelling and bombardment all through the night. We have disabled people.
Speaker 3:
We left our home because the whole area was evacuated.
Speaker 2:
What makes it even more significant, in my mind, is even beyond the direct humanitarian situation. What we're having here is a few of our norms and principles very much challenged in a way through impunity. But I think it's a bit more subversive than that Sure violations of international humanitarian law on a daily basis. At the same time, we're seeing the instrumentalization of humanitarian action, and that comes in different forms. So, for example, some of the figures being presented by the Israeli government and COGAT in particular, which is the administrative branch for Palestine, some of the figures about aid trucks going into Gaza. They're not accurate. They're presented as a success story, whereas actually there's less aid getting in MALCOLM BRABANT With children now withering away from hunger in Gaza and urgent UN warnings about famine.
Speaker 1:
Israel this morning is allowing in more food and humanitarian aid with increasing international airdrops.
Speaker 2:
There's no food or water up in northern.
Speaker 1:
Gaza. They drop some bottles of water, but we need food. We are starving. I swear to God.
Speaker 2:
It's an oversimplification of what it means to provide humanitarian assistance, which is a hugely complicated activity, a set of activities. It requires organisation, it requires people, it requires supplies, it requires negotiation, it requires the will of activities. It requires organisation, it requires people, it requires supplies, it requires negotiation, it requires the will of communities and sometimes this is boiled down into trucks crossing a border to we're sending parachutes with food in and therefore humanitarian assistance is getting in, and at times this has been used as a narrative to be able to justify continuing the war, as in look look, humanitarian assistance is coming in. Therefore it must be a reasonable intensity of conflict you talked about the health infrastructure being completely demolished.
Speaker 3:
Now we have seen attacks or destruction of health services in other places, in sudan, in in ukraine. In this particular case, you affirm in your mind that this is an attack. Israel, the IDF, says that it always upholds international law. I mean, can those two things be true at the same time?
Speaker 2:
No, they can't, and I think that we're seeing many different ways in which international humanitarian law has been broken. I mean, firstly, there is the supply of humanitarian assistance.
Speaker 2:
There is, I believe, the siege and hunger have been used as a weapon of war but at the same time, there's the principles of precaution and proportionality, and I think that this war is flouting those principles. So if you look at precaution, if you look at the warnings that are given to people to move to evacuate hospitals, they're barely adequate to get people out. In many, many cases, absolutely not adequate to get people out and often they've moved them into more danger. When I was in Gaza, people were given an evacuation order to move from around Shifa Hospital further south to El Mawazi, where I was staying, which is now the area which is being attacked At the same time, the principle of proportion, I mean, what are we now? 37,000 people killed, it's astonishing. And the neighbourhood after neighbourhood after neighbourhood, which has been completely flattened. So there's no question in my mind that this is willful disregard of international humanitarian law.
Speaker 3:
In February, you and the heads of other aid agencies, the ICRC and the UN, addressed member states ambassadors here in Geneva and I remember you said we're seeing the willful dismantling of international law. Msf is traditionally sometimes more outspoken than some of the others. Do you think it helps? Did you get any useful support from these ambassadors, or should they do more?
Speaker 2:
For sure. I think they should do more, and this is a great, great question. It's one that I think I struggle with. So, firstly, yes, I think it's helped to a degree. I think it's helped to a degree in that I think it's added to an awareness and a narrative and an understanding of what's actually happening.
Speaker 2:
I mean this, from the very beginning, has been a propaganda war as much as it has been a violent horror that it has been. It's been a war of the airwaves as well as a war of the air, and so I think being able to provide a narrative for the humanitarian project here is really important. Now we also, as many other organisations did, asked for a ceasefire. That still very clearly hasn't happened. Our access hasn't improved, in fact it's got worse and one of the big fears of speaking out in this way is that you do decrease your access but, more importantly, that you put your own staff under threat. So it's not something that we do lightly, but my big concern is, as well as all of these very important and profound impacts, that is going to happen in Gaza as a consequence of this, this impunity and this willful disregard for international humanitarian law is what does it mean elsewhere. What does it mean? How could this be translated into other countries, into Sudan, into the? If we can operate as a world with such impunity, where does that leave us?
Speaker 1:
JANE FERGUSON. A young boy lies under this blanket. He is dead. His body is burnt and covered in shrapnel, his wounds too graphic to show MALCOLM BRABANT, the young life of Yazan al-Aidi, the adult hand on the child's heart. It could not save him.
Speaker 3:
You also told the UN Security Council that your staff had treated children as young as five who said that they actually wanted to die. How do you and your staff personally cope with that?
Speaker 2:
I mean I think our staff all around the world on a daily basis are working. I don't think I know that our staff all around the world on a daily basis are are working. I don't think I know that our staff all around the world on a daily basis are working in incredibly difficult situations and I'm incredibly proud of the work that we do. But in Gaza they're under such intense pressure. I mean, they're part of the community. They are having to displace and they're displacing four or five times, trying to find tents to live in and, at the same time, reorganizing complex medical programs. I mean it's astonishing the versatility, but at the same time, they're exhausted. They've been going through this for months and months and months and the brutality of what is what is happening and they're living through. Yes, people are saying that they would rather end it than continue, and that can't be a surprise to us.
Speaker 3:
Does it keep you awake at night?
Speaker 2:
I mean, I think you know I spoke to a father of a boy and a girl just recently, a few days ago, and they were getting treatment in a hospital outside of Gaza and he was explaining his story, the complexity of getting medical treatment. The girl was five and the boy was around 13 or 14 and they both had some, some pretty bad burn wounds, and they were explaining the story, the number of incidents that happened and the team that were treating them hadn't picked up on the fact that until having this story, that he also lost his wife and three other children in the space of a few, a few months, and his words were she took three with her and left two with me, and so, yeah, things make you question a lot of things, but at the same time, if that doesn't motivate you to continue, then what can I mean? It's horrific.
Speaker 3:
Right at the start of this interview you said perhaps you were a bit naive when you joined up with MSF. Do you ever think now, looking at the amount of conflict there is around the world, that you're a bit naive continuing with it, or do you ever despair? I mean, people just seem to be fighting all the time.
Speaker 2:
People just seem to be fighting all the time. I still think I'm naive in many ways. I'm sure I am. I sometimes think there's a bigger picture happening here and I think that's not the case. I think humanitarian work is going to be important for decades to come, and that's a very sad thing to have to say. I also think that the politics around humanitarian work are changing as well.
Speaker 2:
I think if you look at the rise or the increase in Security Council resolutions which are focused on humanitarian assistance rather than resolving conflicts, I think there's something very interesting happening here in that we have it's becoming a little bit the international currency sort of international political countries, humanitarian, humanitarian access.
Speaker 2:
We see a small example of that in in Gaza.
Speaker 2:
But I think, in terms of the geopolitics, something very interesting, or very concerning maybe, is going to happen in terms of being able to provide humanitarian assistance in a neutral way, based on impartial needs calculations in the coming years and at the same time, the needs are bigger, the size of humanitarian, the volume of humanitarian response is bigger, there are more aid agencies, there are more humanitarian workers, there's more education for humanitarian workers. So I think what we're also going to see over the coming years is something of a consolidation of that constituency, a constituency of humanitarian workers, a constituency of people who require humanitarian assistance, and and so I mean, yes, it's, it's. It's despairing, it's humbling to be faced with the limits of what you can achieve on a daily basis, every day. I mean, we're very lucky to have all the supporters that we do have in MSF, the amazing staff that we do, but it's a drop in the ocean sorry for the cliché, but it really is and it's humbling to be faced by that as well, but it's going's, it's going to remain essential.
Speaker 3:
So, in that sense, it's a question of how can we do more and how can we do better, rather than despairing okay, I would actually come to the, the last question, which is because you already told me that if you can't be motivated by the, the poor father and his, his children, um, what can you be motivated by? We have quite a lot of younger listeners. Imagine somebody's thinking when you've described, you know, being bombed, seeing appalling suffering, somebody's thinking that might be a job for me. What would you say to them?
Speaker 2:
I mean warts and all I would say go for it. I mean, I, I have the most amazing set of colleagues all around the, all around the world. You know, you move from place to place and then sometimes you don't see each other again for a few years and you see people progressing through different positions, learning different skills. There's a real passion, there's a real commitment. Yes, it's a hard imperfect. I mean it's an imperfect endeavor. Msf is a great organization, but it's highly imperfect. It's like any big organization. There are many things that we need to improve on and I think the same thing applies to the humanitarian sector more broadly but it is working on a daily basis with the most brilliant, committed, passionate, humble people that really want to do stuff.
Speaker 3:
And they can make a difference.
Speaker 2:
And they can make a difference, and if you have a low-energy day, let's face it. We all do. If you don't have any ideas for a particular day, somebody around the corner, sitting in one of the chairs just next to us here, will be coming forward and putting something forward, and so there's energy in terms of what we do.
Speaker 3:
There's also a lot of energy in terms of who we do it with. And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Chris Lockyer and MSF for their time and their dedication. Join us for more Summer Profiles. Every two weeks on a Tuesday, we'll be talking to a Geneva group that looks for treatments and cures for the illnesses that affect the world's poorest. We'll be hearing from an inspiring initiative to get refugees right here in Geneva involved in sport, and an organisation working to get reparation for survivors of sexual violence. All that and more all summer long here on Inside Geneva. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swissinfo 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.
