Inside Geneva
A podcast from SWI swissinfo.ch, a multilingual international public service media company from Switzerland, where Imogen Foulkes puts big questions facing the world to the experts working to tackle them in Switzerland’s international city.
Inside Geneva
Special episode: World Humanitarian Day stories from crisis zones
Join us for a special extra edition of Inside Geneva to mark World Humanitarian Day, with testimonies from aid workers who have given their all – and who have often lost a great deal.
“So I had taken him to the airport together with our child, and, yes, it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him,” says Laura Dolci.
Dolci’s young husband Jean-Selim was killed, just weeks after the birth of their son, in the bombing of the UN’s headquarters in Baghdad in 2003.
Twenty years on, WHO cameraman Chris Black was sent to Gaza, to support, and document, medical care there.
“Something I really will never forget is a woman, with a young child, saying to me: ‘Are we safe here?’ And I wanted to say: ‘Yes, you're in the grounds of a hospital, under international humanitarian law this is a protected space, you should be safe here.’ But I couldn't say to her: ‘You're safe here,’” says Black.
More than 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
“People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. And I don't think so. I think what's brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October and who go back every day to do it again and again and again,” continues Black.
“The aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper; ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being to the service of humanity,” says Dolci.
Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva for an inspiring listen.
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Host: Imogen Foulkes
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This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, imogen Fowlkes, and this is a production from Swissinfo, the international public media company of Switzerland.
Speaker 2:In today's program. So I had taken him to the airport together with our child and, yes, it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him.
Speaker 3:People have told me oh, you must be very brave for going to Gaza, and I don't think so. I think what's brave is that the people have been doing this work since early October and who go back every day to do it again and again, and again.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to this special edition of Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen Fowkes, and today we're going to mark World Humanitarian Day. On the 19th of August every year, we remember what humanitarian workers do for us all taking big risks in the world's most dangerous environments to bring help to people men, women, children, the homeless, the wounded caught up in conflict. To begin, let's hear from the head of what is perhaps the world's best-known humanitarian agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross. Mirjana Spoljaric is its president, and last week, august 12, she appealed for more respect for the Geneva Conventions, which are 75 years old this month.
Speaker 4:We have to put the protection of civilians up front. We have to prioritise the protection of civilians and their infrastructure. Winning a war at all costs works against the spirit of containing suffering, of imposing rules even in situations of war.
Speaker 1:And Spoljaric reminded us just what her staff do and the risks they take.
Speaker 4:Our job is immensely difficult and immensely dangerous. We have had colleagues losing their lives in the past months, but we do succeed in reuniting families every day. We do succeed in informingiting families every day. We do succeed in informing families about the fate of their relatives. We do succeed in visiting detainees. We do succeed in bringing assistance to the people in need, and sometimes these people haven't seen anyone come to them in months.
Speaker 1:Now, august 19th, was chosen as World Humanitarian Day for a very special reason it marks the day 21 years ago, in 2003, when the UN's headquarters at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad were attacked, killing 22 people, most of them aid workers. Last year, on the 20th anniversary of that day, I had the privilege to talk to Laura Dolci, whose life changed irrevocably.
Speaker 2:I'm Italian and I live in Geneva right now. I work for the United Nations and 2003,. Back then I was 33 and I was just married to another humanitarian worker and we just had a baby child and my husband, my newlywed Jean-Céline Canan, who himself was French and Egyptian. We had met in Bosnia and he was deployed to the UN mission in Baghdad, to the UN mission in Baghdad, and he died, along with 21 colleagues in the terrorist truck that drove into the UN headquarters.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about you and Jean Selim.
Speaker 3:You met in.
Speaker 1:Bosnia. You were a kind of dedicated UN couple.
Speaker 2:Yes, we met in 97 in a place called Tsazin in northwest Bosnia, so above Bihać, and we were both attending a military-civilian situation, weekly meeting, and, yes, so from there on we became, yes, a very solid, fiercely in love with the work, but with us ourselves, a humanitarian couple basically. And so after that we've lived three years in Bosnia and then we moved to Kosovo when the UN mission got started there in 99. And then from there on, we went to New York. I was working for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and then we briefly moved to Geneva and then he was called to support the startup of the mission in Baghdad.
Speaker 2:And he didn't return.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me a bit about those days in August? You took him to the airport in Geneva.
Speaker 2:Yes, he had come home because our son, mattia Selim, was about to be born, and then this little one wouldn't come out on time. So we had two more weeks together waiting for this little baby, and then we spent, basically as a family, three weeks together, and he left on the 17th of August to return to the mission, to be there for another 40 days. And so he had arrived back in Baghdad just the eve of the blast and with friends and colleagues. They were waiting for him with some bubbles and he displayed the pictures of our baby to everybody. They had a party, and the following day he was dead. So I had taken him to the airport together with our child and, yes, it took me in fact many years to be able to use the same elevator in the airport where I last kissed him.
Speaker 1:It was mid-afternoon when the bomb went off. A routine press conference was underway in front of the cameras. Then this.
Speaker 2:I was out walking with the pram, like any new mother. I was trying to cope with, you know, the baby crying, and it was a very hot summer. This was 2003. It was probably our first climate change summer here, at least in this part of the world, and so I came home because it was time for breastfeeding, and so just before, while I was about to pull out Mattia Selim from the pram, I just have a quick look at the computer and there is this breaking news, this capital big red title saying blast, explosion.
Speaker 2:And then there was a picture that appeared.
Speaker 2:So I saw the building and, uh, and the only thing I remember I I remember I was leaning forward.
Speaker 2:I immediately leaned forward, and then I was using the other hand to keep moving the pram because Mattia Sini was waking up. And then I saw my legs. I was standing, and the only thing I remember is that I saw these shaking legs and I was looking at them, them, and I thought it was somebody else. It was the body of somebody else, because I was standing, but this half of my body was out of control, and so the first instinct was to try to sit down and grab Matias Selim out of the pram and hold it very tight because I thought I would fall, and so I was trying to balance myself by keeping the baby with me and then I calmed down, trying to breathe normally again, and then I immediately tried to call that number. But, as I said, after two, three attempts there was this constant sort of beep sound and at that point I knew he was dead. It was that sound on the phone that was a prelude to a tragedy has happened.
Speaker 1:Do you think the UN was in any way naive about its security, that everybody should know? Here we are, the blue blue flag.
Speaker 2:We're only doing good, or well, I think that day, the 19th of august 2003, was really like a benchmark day in the history of the un.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think we should have been clearer in understanding that the times and the changing times that we were living in.
Speaker 2:But I still think that you know between the head and the changing times that we were living in, but I still think that you know between the head of the mission and everybody down the ranks, this was still a bit the old school thinking that exactly the UN flag was there to protect, including its own staff, and be basically a shield to.
Speaker 2:And in fact, the first readings of what was happening in Iraq after the invasion was really that these attacks were happening against the military troops or the occupants or whatever they were called, and not the UN. So I think the 19th of August was the day where I think we lost that innocence, probably, or that as you called it, maybe Naivety, naivety, and definitely a UN flag or the sign of the Red Cross, or they are no longer shields per se, and from there on, we've been having more and more of this. I mean, I think here in the Palais des Nations, next to the names of Baghdadi, for instance, you have the list of other colleagues we lost in 2007 in the bombing at the Algiers headquarters and then in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1:Of course, we lose colleagues every day, you still work for the UN. You're dedicated and committed. Dedicated and committed yes.
Speaker 2:I do, and in fact I'm actually I think it's 26 years this year.
Speaker 2:So I have to say it was very tough and a very profound decision that I had to take, even in concertation with my family.
Speaker 2:After what happened, I mean, I was 33, left there with this baby child, of course, with a life trajectory that was going to be quite different from the plan and the family and the aspirations that we had just so happily signed together as a new couple, as a newlywed couple and young parents.
Speaker 2:But in all of that I really felt that by staying with the UN or keeping that UN blue flag in our lives would have meant a continuity with what we were also as a young family. That UN flag means values, means a moral compass with what we were also as a young family. That UN flag means values, means a moral compass, means it's a life choice. And so I thought also that having a child grow without a father because my son has obviously no recollection of his father one way, a very significant and strong way, to try to pass on his father to him was not just by telling him how his father was and what he was doing, but it's also to continue to work for that organization and and keep that UN flag in the family you talked about the attacks increasing and that there are more and more names here in Geneva inscribed of people who have died, been killed as humanitarian workers.
Speaker 1:On World Humanitarian Day, what would you say to people who are thinking these are legitimate targets UN aid workers, red Cross workers? What would you say?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we, the families and friends and colleagues so those who died or remain maimed on the 19th of August 2003, really pushed for this day to become World Humanitarian Day. And we did that not only to make sure that the memory of our colleagues and friends was kept alive year after year, but also to put this profession a bit up on the surface. I mean this is a very noble profession. I mean, in those cars, behind those trucks, sitting at these negotiating tables in very difficult circumstances, you have really people that not only have learned hard to do that profession, the aid worker, the humanitarian worker, the peacekeeper, I mean, ultimately it's a human being that decides to put its own being also to the service of humanity. So the resentment in a sense should be placed somewhere else.
Speaker 2:And of course, politically, we know these big organizations, including the UN, may be disappointing, but the operational side of it, because that's what it is, I mean the humanitarians, these are the operational faces, these are those who have left their families and lives behind to go to places that are difficult but really driven just by one goal, which is really to make sure that others suffer less. So, yeah, I think by definition it's a a wrong target and it's just ending up compiling more violence to violence and more suffering to suffering. But still, the other message is that even if you do that, you're not really deterring the next generation. I mean, there is this lineup of young people with motivation that, despite what we are hearing and despite the news, they are ready, they're packing their bags to go, they are putting their best years, their youth, their aspiration, at the service of others.
Speaker 1:Laura Dolci still works for the UN in Geneva and every year she still marks World Humanitarian Day. And every year she still marks World Humanitarian Day.
Speaker 4:For our second story on this week's episode, we're going to revisit an interview I did earlier this year with an aid worker just back from one of the most dangerous places on Earth.
Speaker 1:That's the sound of a World Health Organization team going into Gaza's Al Nasser Hospital to deliver supplies and evacuate the most critically ill patients. With the team was a WHO cameraman.
Speaker 3:So my name is Christopher Black and I'm a communications officer working at the World Health Organization in.
Speaker 1:Geneva. I've known Chris for 20 years and I thought talking to him about the five weeks he spent in Gaza might be something our listeners would be interested in, something a bit different from the claims and counterclaims of the warring parties, instead an eyewitness account from a humanitarian worker on the ground. Now Chris, although based in Geneva, has spent plenty of time in conflict zones from Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of Congo. I asked him first what his impressions were arriving in Gaza.
Speaker 3:Coming into Gaza, because again, we've seen it on media what it's like. Maybe I had an idea in my head of what it was going to be like in Rafah. So the drive from Cairo is a long one.
Speaker 3:You go across the desert and then you arrive arrived in the evening in the dark to Rafah and right away you can see that it's a very busy place. This was a town that previously had 300,000 people. Now, at the time when I arrived there, maybe 1.5 million people. So there are a lot of people around. It's a dense place and right away you see that kind of every inch and scrap of empty land is being used by people to live on. They've built their own tents and they're living, basically, even if it's on the road or on a boulevard in the middle of the road, or sometimes they were living on roundabouts. So that's arriving at the dark, so you have that impression of humanity being all around you. It's a busy place. It's a dense place. During the daylight you see that it's also.
Speaker 3:When you have 1.5 million people in a town built for 300,000 with not a lot of services in terms of sanitation, garbage removal, water provision and electricity, immediately there's going to be challenges for day-to-day living for many, many people. So you have a lot of garbage that's on the street. You have a lot of people living in tents close to garbage and sewage. But the one thing that you also are struck by is that people are very resilient. Palestinians are very, very resilient people, and every day they were trying to make improvements to the tents that they themselves built. So they're trying to put in sewage, they're trying to put in water, they're picking up the garbage themselves, but it's a constant battle to kind of keep on top of that. So during the day the garbage builds up and in the morning someone tries to clean it up, but it's them themselves that are doing that work.
Speaker 1:You went to support Nassau Hospital. Tell me about your first trip. That was before it was raided or besieged or whatever we want to call it.
Speaker 3:Siege or whatever we want to call it. So I went about two weeks before on an assessment mission with WHO colleagues and as well to bring some medical supplies into it at the time because it was partially functioning at the time. So they were still treating patients. They were still treating a lot of patients. There were still displaced people living in the hospital itself and there were health workers living and working in the hospital doing their best in a really horrible situation. There was problems removing medical waste. I remember even at the time there was lots of cats and eating in the medical waste, which wasn't a pretty thing to see. But there was a little bit of hope. Like there was a bakery that was functioning. They were trying to bake their own bread for the patients and for the doctors and that was working, you know. So it was health workers and a community doing their best to provide much needed health services to the population that really needed it.
Speaker 3:And then Tonight smoke and chaos filling the hallways of Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility still functioning in Gaza, as Israeli troops mounted a raid in search of Hamas operatives. And then I was there a little over two weeks later, so at that point, the situation had changed dramatically in the neighborhood and in the hospital, as we now know. In the neighborhood and in the hospital, as we now know and it was maybe as a communicator I was doing things that I've never done before, such as helping to move the patients, helping to evacuate patients out of the hospital, and it's, I think, something I'll never forget, something I'll never forget something I hadn't done before, I haven't carried a lot of patients, so you're part of this mission to evacuate the patients.
Speaker 3:Your chief role was as a cameraman, but in fact you had to do a lot more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my chief role was definitely as a witness, let's say in terms of trying to document the work on the ground of the WHO and the UN, and I did definitely have to do more than that.
Speaker 3:I had to, in a way, join because of the very few personnel that we have on the ground there, very few personnel that we could move in. There wasn't very many seats on this trip, so I had to do work that I don't normally do and that was helping to where I could to help move patients, and that was going up four flights of stairs into the ICU and down four flights of stairs in the dark and that night, in a health facility that is basically shot up, there's garbage, there's medical waste, there's sewage, everywhere there's cats, everywhere there's dogs, there was even a mule in the front of the building. And everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked in the dark I remember just the faces of patients coming out. Just when I shone my flashlight, there was just a patient there in the hallway in the dark, and they had been there at that point for weeks in the dark, without food, without water and sometimes without medical attention. But the health workers were doing their best. They weren't enough for them.
Speaker 3:There was only a handful of doctors and a handful of nurses, no electricity, medical supplies running out, but they were so brave to stick it out and try to deliver those services because they were saving lives. It was really life-changing. It's crazy to say that after 25 years in the humanitarian more than that, almost 30 years in the humanitarian work based in Geneva but often going to the field in natural disasters and conflicts and outbreaks. But this was really another level in terms of the needs that I saw on the ground and the response that the UN and the Red Crescent were trying to deliver.
Speaker 3:And that's something I really will never forget is a woman with her young child saying to me are we safe here? Are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her you're in the grounds of a hospital. Under international humanitarian law, this is a protected space. You should be safe here. But I couldn't say to her you're safe here and I couldn't tell her one way or the other, whether she should stay or she should go. Israel army trying to enter Nasser Hospital now. But she should have been safe there. That should be a hospital should be a safe place for everyone, everyone here in Nasser Hospital.
Speaker 1:Can you process it in the sense that there must be a feeling of satisfaction to be part of a mission that does evacuate critically ill patients, but also a sense of frustration, to put it mildly, to see the conditions of a hospital?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's one of the most dramatic things is to see a hospital, something that is so needed in a hospital yeah, I think that's one of the most dramatic things is to see a hospital, something that is so needed in a community. It's the center of a community, one of the centers of a community, and to see that not functioning is heartbreaking. It's really heartbreaking and it's something I don't think I'll ever forget. And to meet the people that are so brave to try to do this work, despite the shelling, despite being in the dark, despite not having all the tools they need to do that, and the Red Crescent paramedics who, every day, are doing this kind of job, going in and out of these combat areas to try to help people.
Speaker 1:You were showing me pictures of their ambulances.
Speaker 3:Yes, the ambulances that have been shot at, that had been shelled, that gets stuck in awful roads. It's really an incredible job that they do. Today, aid organisations reluctantly suspended deliveries to north Gaza because of security.
Speaker 1:First flower in 20 days, he says.
Speaker 3:People have told me oh, you must be very brave for going to Gaza, and I don't think so. I think what's brave is that the people have been doing this work since early October and who go back every day to do it again and again and again, and who never give up and who are there to deliver. And it's not a lot of people, I mean, it's a couple hundred people there trying to deliver to an incredible large group of people that need help.
Speaker 1:You were telling me about the engineer who came to fix the generator.
Speaker 3:Yeah, an engineer who had lost his family in an attack but who obviously was scared to go back into this area where there's active fighting, where it's bringing back lots of memories for him. So he was scared, but he did it every day and he kept coming back the next day, the next day, the next day, like this mad scientist. It was in his mind that he wanted to fix this generator because he knows how important it is for a hospital. A hospital without electricity is basically a dead hospital. So much relies in a hospital in terms of, like I mentioned, the water being pumped to the roof, the oxygen getting to patients, the instruments that are needed to keep people alive. You need electricity for that. So he wanted to fix this problem and he kept going back, day in, day in day, in trying to fix this for us.
Speaker 1:And this is a man who lost his wife and daughter.
Speaker 3:Indeed, and that's something I saw over and over again the dedication of health workers and humanitarians.
Speaker 1:You're back here now. Will you go back, could you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would go back tomorrow if I could. My heart is still there. From the very beginning I sensed, going back to your question, one of the first impressions I had of being in Gaza is not only the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people and the situation that they're under, but it's hard to imagine a situation where every single person you talk to, every single person you meet, has a story of trauma, of death, of loss, of displacement, multiple displacement, having to move multiple times, having lost their homes multiple times. It's rare that you are in a situation where that's everyone's story and that is indeed everyone's story. Today in Gaza, no one is safe. Everyone is on the move. Families that have been displaced three or four times now are watching the news, are watching, trying to figure out should we move and should we not move.
Speaker 3:And one of the last things I filmed there, I was in a little nutrition center because that's, as you know, an issue that's on the rise Malnutrition in children is on the rise and there was a young girl that came to, wanted to meet one of my colleagues and the colleague said to her she was all smiley and meeting her and she said to her what do you want, meaning like how can I help you? What do you want? And the girl eyes just filled up with tears and she says I want to go home, I just want to go home, I just want to go home. And that's the story for everyone there. All they want is to go home, a safe place, peace. And it's not peace for a day, it's peace forever.
Speaker 1:Everyone needs peace in that whole region. And those words from Chris Black bring us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. I hope you have been moved and maybe also motivated by what you heard here. You can email us with your thoughts and comments at insidegeneva, at swissinfoch, and, of course, catch up on all our episodes and review us wherever you get your podcasts. A reminder you've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss Info production. 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.
