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.
This week we spotlight the Human Rights Council’s special session on atrocities happening in Ukraine, post Russia’s invasion. We’ll also be heading to Afghanistan for the latest alarming UN assessments on food insecurity there, and to the Occupied West Bank - after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh - and to DPR Korea, where health agency WHO, is committed to do help stop the spread of COVID-19. We also have some good news about successful malaria vaccine pilot schemes in Africa, which could save tens of thousands of children’s lives.
In this week’s show, two in three children in Ukraine have now had to flee the war since the Russian invasion, UNICEF takes no pleasure in telling us, while UN humanitarians have confirmed they’re now helping some 300 evacuees who’ve been bussed out of the devastated Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol. And as refugee numbers rise globally, we’ll be finding out what soul legend Dionne Warwick thinks about this growing global emergency.
Did you know that food grown in Ukraine feeds 400 million people around the world?
Since Russia invaded its neighbour three weeks ago, Ukrainians need outside help to keep from going hungry, and that’s where the UN World Food Programme comes in, as we’ll hear.
Away from Europe, earlier this week, we heard UN Secretary-General António Guterres implore donors for funds to help Yemen, where two in three people need aid just to survive.
Hello, two weeks since Russia attacked Ukraine, more than 2.3 million people have fled the country - no easy journey of course, but for the trans community whose passports don’t match their identities, escaping the war is proving even harder. Find out why, in this week’s interview with NGO Transgender Europe (TGEU).
We’ll also hear the latest from a refugee shelter in Berlin that’s now helping those fleeing the Ukraine crisis. Stay with us too, to hear about how Shakespeare’s Rosalind fits into the mix, with the show’s co-host, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.
In this week’s show, as people in Ukraine face a second week of Russian hostilities, we hear how UN humanitarians and rights bodies are doing as much as they can to help, from those aid workers on the ground in Lviv, near the Ukraine- Poland border, to the Human Rights Council, which has been holding an urgent debate on the crisis.
Stay with us for some tough testimony on the impact that the crisis is having on health workers, and also for always-relevant commentary - and a nod to Bertolt Brecht’s “Refugee Conversations” - from Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.
In our first show of 2022, the fight goes on for oil-rich Marib in northern Yemen, where the UN’s migration agency IOM is doing its utmost to help all those who’ve been repeatedly displaced by the conflict.
Journalists are under fire, too, UNESCO tells us, while on the COVID front line, the World Health Organization (WHO) has just announced that – for the moment at least – there’s no particular risk associated with holding next month’s Winter Games in Beijing.
And after days of nationwide protest in Kazakhstan, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet has appealed for calm.
Following resolutions on climate and COVID vaccine equity, this week’s show highlights why the UN’s top rights forum is more relevant than ever, according to outgoing President Nazhat Shameem Khan from Fiji, who has been overseeing the work of the Human Rights Council in Geneva for a year.
And, an appeal to “fight like hell” for vaccine equity, from the World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove.
This and other top stories from the week, with closing comments from regular guest, Solange Behoteguy-Cortes.
