Summer profiles: challenges in humanitarian aid with MSF’s Secretary General

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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. 

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Host: Imogen Foulkes
Production assitant: Claire-Marie Germain
Distribution: Sara Pasino
Marketing: Xin Zhang