It’s been an intense week of face-to-face meetings in Geneva - just like the good old days, before COVID…Among the top stories we’ve been covering, there’s been grim but important news from Ethiopia and Syria in the Human Rights Council, a moving update from UN humanitarians in Ukraine, and significant progress towards holding elections in Libya - although they’re still proving elusive.
In this week’s show, the UN ramps up aid for eastern Afghanistan, where communities are reeling after its deadliest earthquake in decades.
UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has been particularly busy this week, as the Human Rights Council 50th session got underway in Geneva. She’s spoken about her visit to China and also issued alerts on the devastated Ukrainian city of Mariupol. This week the world celebrated albinism awareness day, and to find out more, we’ll be hearing from Harry Freeland, director of a powerful documentary filmed among people living with the rare genetic condition in Tanzania, In The Shadow Of The Sun.
Four failed rainy seasons in the Horn of Africa, are tearing families apart –we hear one veteran humanitarian’s heart-breaking testimony from a displacement camp in Somalia.
Climate shocks are also playing their part in undermining vital investment in developing countries, according to trade agency UNCTAD, and we’ll also hear that food prices are going to be increasingly difficult to stomach this year, as millions of people in Sri Lanka – in the midst of its worst crisis since independence - are already finding out.
Having a stroke is something many of us associate with older people, but that’s not always the case, as we find out, in this week’s interview with a courageous stroke activist who’s been telling staff at UN Geneva how he managed to learn to speak again.
