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Inside Geneva was at the World Health Assembly over the last week, finding out what lessons are being learned from Covid-19 now that the WHO says the global health emergency is over – even if the pandemic isn’t. 
Suerie Moon, co-director, Global Health Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute said: "Every single country is vulnerable to pandemics. Every single country can have its economy, its society fundamentally undermined by a pandemic. We know this."
Member states are supposed to be working on a pandemic treaty – so we cope with the next one better. Fair access to medicines is a key issue. 
Barbara Stocking, chair of panel for a global public health convention added: "On medicines and so on, I think this is the most difficult issue to be handling. I hope most countries are signed up to the view that there should be equity. I don’t think the developing countries will sign up to any treaty, when they don’t see that there are plans to get much nearer to equity."
Can medicine producers be persuaded to be generous? 
Thomas Cueni, Director General, International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (IFPMA) said: "You cannot coerce know-how sharing, because either you’re willing to share your wisdom with me or you’re not. IP waivers, which means ignoring patents, would actually be a huge barrier."
Transparency and rapid information sharing are on the agenda too: 
Imogen Foulkes, Inside Geneva host asked: "We still don’t know exactly how and where and from what Covid-19 came. Will we find that out do you think? Is investigation still going on?"
Maria van Kerkhove, World Health Organisation concluded: "We’re certainly going to do everything we can to figure out how this pandemic began. And it does depend on collaboration, scientific collaboration, collaboration from member states, sharing of information, sharing data, and we need more collaboration from China, we’ve been very vocal about that.’ 
Listen and subscribe to the podcast to find out more. 
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The Sudan conflict began over a month ago, and the consequences for the population are getting more and more serious. 

In this episode we take a long hard look at the conflict in Sudan, and what the UN and humanitarian agencies here in Geneva – the ones whose very purpose is to either prevent such conflicts happening, or at the very least help ease the suffering – can actually do. 

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have been operating in Sudan for decades and Vittorio Oppizzi, the project coordinator in Sudan, says that this conflict "adds on a situation that was already critical." 

Another member of MSF, Melat Haile, says that "it's the poor, the innocent, the medical people who will suffer from this." She explains that in 2022 alone, they conducted more than half a million medical consultations, "and now the need is going to be much more." 

Then what can be done about this situation? Paula Gaviria, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, thinks that "the first responsibility we have as a nation is to stop violence, suffering and targeting the civil population."

Listen to this episode to find out more about the conflict in Sudan and why Mohamed Osman, from Human Rights Watch, said they had already warned about this dangerous situation escalating. 
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This week, Inside Geneva goes behind the scenes with the ICRC’s prisoner exchange in Yemen.
Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC: "I look at my kids, I look at my family, and I say ‘imagine now there is a frontline between us, and my son, my brother, my mother, my father are captured and I can't see them for a year, or two, three, four".


Can the move help bring peace to Yemen?


Daniel Warner, analyst: "Confidence building is the most important thing in all negotiations, and in any kind of situation, such as prisoner exchange, but in any development of finding peace".


And we look at Switzerland’s tricky position over Ukraine, neutrality, and the arms trade.


Keith Krause, Geneva Graduate Institute: "German officials have expressed their dismay that Switzerland would not allow re-export of munitions that Germany had bought several years ago, so Switzerland finds itself in a very delicate position".


Daniel Warner, analyst: "A Russian diplomat said that Switzerland is no longer considered a neutral country. When you think of the summits: Reagan Gorbachev, Biden Putin, it's difficult to imagine in the future Geneva or Switzerland will be a centre for negotiations".


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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been indicted for war crimes. This week, Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes asks whether international law can really bring justice.

“The real crime of crimes in this story is the decision to go to war. Every other crime – the deportation of children, the crimes against humanity, the war crimes – is a consequence of the decision to go to war,” says Philippe Sands, lawyer and author of East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (2016).

Will we ever see Russia’s leader in court?

“People are very impatient to say: ‘Why hasn’t Putin been put in jail? How can this war continue?’ It will take time, hopefully something will happen, but we all have our doubts,” says analyst Daniel Warner.

What does the focus on Ukraine mean for accountability in countries such as Ethiopia or Myanmar, where war crimes are alleged too?

“The response to Russia’s aggression against the people of Ukraine stands out: in investigation of human rights violations, the delivery of justice and accountability. It could serve as a model, and it could help the world imagine a new international order,” says Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.
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In this episode of Inside Geneva we take a long hard look at how aid is delivered, and why it is often obstructed. Did UN aid agencies fail Syria after the earthquake?
Marco Sassoli from Geneva University speaking to Inside Geneva says: "The UN being a club it represents its members, and therefore it considers that it cannot do anything on the territory of a member state without the consent of the member state."
But are there ways to get aid in immediately?
Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council says he is "a fundamentalist on the need to go straight to the victims, the people in need cross border cross line, cross mountain, cross desert, the shortest route."
But with armed groups on the ground, how do aid workers persuade them to let them in?
Thaer Allaw, from the Center for Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation explains this difficulty: "We think that we have a good cause, and we think that those humanitarian principles are universal. And then when you hit the reality they are not."
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This week Inside Geneva podcast host Imogen Foulkes talks to authors who have written about humanitarian topics.

What is it like to track down human rights violators?

“Each day in court, seeing Hissène Habré I would pump my fist: ‘my God, we got him.’ But you never knew, and I have to say when they started reading the verdict it was such joy, but it was also a relief. I mean I felt like after 16 years, this weight had been lifted off me. I could finally recover my life,” says Reed Brody, author of To Catch a Dictator (2022).

What are the dilemmas facing journalists covering humanitarian crises? Why should one particular crisis have more attention?

“The more coverage of Ukraine, or the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey; the more coverage a crisis gets the more likely audiences are to be aware of it, to care about it, and to donate to it,” says Martin Scott, author of Humanitarian Journalists (2022).

What is the dark reality of fortress Europe’s migration policy?

“Suddenly you’re in direct communication with a person who is telling you they’ve been locked up indefinitely, they’re being tortured, they’re seeing people raped or seeing people die as a result of European Union migration policy. And that’s the moment when you go: ‘wait a second, something has gone desperately wrong,’” says Sally Hayden, author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned (2022).
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