China and the Golden Veins of Henan: A film-maker’s view
Andy Cohen's documentary, Ximei (2019), was premiered at the 18th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) in Geneva, Switzerland, in March, 2019.
Local health officials, worried they would get left behind by...
Steve McCurry (Part II): The complications of photography
Feature Photo: Copyright Steve McCurry Steve McCurry has earned fame as a
photographer who produced some of the most exquisitely beautiful colour images
in the past several decades. McCurry’s critics, and...
One Man’s War for Human Dignity: The Extraordinary Life of Kevin Boyle
"In this beautifully-written and fascinating book, Mike Chinoy has brought to life one of the great pioneering human rights lawyers of our times"Conor O’Clery, author of 'The Shoemaker and...
Why we need to watch Brad Pitt’s film War Machine
As with the wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan highlights the difficult political choices and counter-insurgency strategies the US has been pursuing fruitlessly since 9/11. Today six Muslim countries (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia...
The ex-monk and the Thai sex mafia: helping victims find another way
We have selected Hartanto Gunawan as one of our Global Genevans. These are inspired individuals, such as French water wizard Alain Gachet, Danish environmentalist Inger Andersen or Swiss ornithologist Luc Hoffmann,...
Launch of Global Geneva’s Young Journalists’ & Writers’ Programme and Awards for international schools
Global Geneva's Young Journalists’ and Writers (YWP) Programme is offering travel awards of up to CHF1200 for the best projects, plus the chance to have their articles published. Aimed at junior and senior high school...
Thailand and the pandemic: Lessons in containment
There have been no community-based infections in Thailand for nearly two months. All recently declared cases have been imports from countries such as Egypt, Japan and Sudan. While Thailand's borders remain largely...
Philip and Sadruddin: Two extraordinary visionaries
PERSONAL VIEW BUCKINGHAM PALACE, 27th January, 2017 Dear Ms.Willday, The Duke of Edinburgh has asked me to write and thank you for...
Kurdistan: After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
The following article by American journalist and author Jonathan Randal is part of Global Geneva's commitment to highlight and report on "international Geneva" themes ranging from war and refugees to human rights, humanitarian response...
Letter from Switzerland: An expat’s concern over our Covid deaths
We have to talk about deaths in Switzerland, where over 8,000 people have died of COVID. In a country of eight million people, one person in every thousand has succumbed to...
Brexit and Trumpean policies: The rising attraction of Europe’s international schools
This article appears in Global Geneva's December, 2018-February, 2019 Winter Print and E-edition.
It’s probably not immediately intuitive. But during the 2017-2018 academic year, 45 per cent of all students attending English-medium international schools in...
Angola: Demining key to conservation plans
This article is part of Global Geneva's ongoing Focus series on the cultural and environmental impact of war. It is scheduled for publication in our Winter 2019/20 print and e-edition.
There’s a problem with Angola's...
Afghanistan: time for a more representative peace with Swiss mediation
By Edward Girardet & Peter Jouvenal Editorial Note: Please note that all U.S. troops are now expected to quit Afghanistan by 11 September 2021 although some contractors may remain....
FOCUS on Wildlife & Pandemics: Covid and Conservation in Africa – more than a...
Pangolin - a possible source of the current COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo: UN) This is the first in a regular Global Insights Magazine FOCUS series on Wildlife and Pandemics as...
Focus on Afghanistan: Peter Jouvenal – A journalist veteran held by the Taliban
Peter Jouvenal was visiting a western-style house that he was considering to rent in Kabul when he was seized on Saturday morning, 11 December 2021 by a group of armed Taliban. The...
Whitney Azoy’s Afghanistan: A Partial Comprehension – tales and photos from the pre-war
When National Geographic Magazine commissioned me during the early 2000s to do a story that would ‘reveal’ Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led NATO occupation, I was somewhat panicked. As with...
Book Excerpt: “Are You With Me? Kevin Boyle and the Rise of the Human...
By Mike Chinoy (You can read a Global Geneva book review by Charles Norchi here) In early June 2001, the phone rang at Kevin Boyle’s office at the University...
Freelance journalists: Reporting from the frontlines – and beyond.
The Rory Peck Trust, a Global Geneva media partner, recently held its 2019 Awards in London. Click here for more information.
cover image © Associated press. Photo by Felipe Dana.
At the height of the Balkans war in...
Pangolins and pandemics: digging for the roots of COVID-19
Wet market with wildlife products in China. (Photo: William Dowell) While reporting in Southeast Asia during the 1990s, I used to stop at a place we called the ‘Endangered...
The Last Animals – A documentary on the deadly consequences of the global rhino...
The film follows the conservationists, scientists and activists battling poachers and crime syndicates to protect elephants and rhinos from extinction. From Africa's front lines to behind the scenes of Asian markets, the film takes...
Murder in Room 117: How the assassination of one of America’s top diplomats helped...
As a young foreign correspondent, I undertook my first reporting assignment to Kabul in October 1979, seven months after the killing of Adolph ‘Spike’ Dubs, America’s ambassador to Afghanistan, and two months...
The WHO and Mugabe: The follies of political payback
The astonishing decision last month by Tedros Adhanom, the recently appointed head of the World Health Organization (WHO), to name Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe as goodwill ambassador only underlines what’s wrong with the United Nations...
Publishing World’s Evil Empire? How Facebook and other social media subvert journalism
UPDATED: 9 August, 2020. Facebook is not alone. Google, Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and other social media outlets do virtually the same thing. If reliable content, coupled with an informed public and democracy,...
FOCUS on Wildlife Trafficking & Pandemics: Bushmeat – The Background
Before the European occupation of Africa and the building of colonial empires, including in Asia and the Americas, and the banning by the imperial powers of hunting by indigenous communities, pastoralists, farmers...
Letter from Taiz: Yemen’s last bastion of hope
Global Geneva seeks to provide personal insights based on first-hand experiences into humanitarian and conflict situations around the world.
Senseless violence, lawlessness, resilient people tired of conflict, and a country in chaos: these were my...
Korea’s ‘Tiananmen’ and world memory
This article forms part of our series on cultural and historical repression around the world, and the challenge it poses to the international community.
“Young people sacrificed themselves for change in society, for democracy, for...
Afghanistan: the abandonment of a nation
In autumn 2001, having returned from Afghanistan just prior to the 9 September assassination by Al Qaeda of northern Afghan resistance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud and before its World Trade Center attacks,...
Basel’s uneasy cross-border relationship with Nazi Germany 1933-1945
As a baby boomer of Swiss origin born in the United States, I was always fascinated by Switzerland’s survival role as a neutral country during World War II. My British-educated father, who...
Is the United Nations in Geneva failing as a global people’s forum?
For an international gathering of such importance (the ECOSOC meeting was one of several major events at the Palais), it seems extraordinary that both the United Nations and the Swiss, the host government and...
Exceptional aerial view of the southern Alps of Switzerland and northern Italy.
Photographed late last week (October 26, 2018) on a flight from Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, to the United Kingdom while overflying Switzerland. Note the Mont Blanc and Matterhorn in the distant background. Plus the lack...
The Geneva Film Festival & Censored Chinese History: The Story of Chi Xiaoning and...
Before the 1980s, documentary films in China were mostly propaganda made to serve the ideological purposes of the Communist Party. Views critical of the party were prohibited. Only one official voice could...
Focus on Afghanistan: How the Afghan president helped his brother secure lucrative mining deals...
A longer version of this article was originally published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Afghanistan’s crags and valleys hold at
least a trillion dollars’ worth...
Why the fossil fuel companies won’t defend the U.S. government in court
This article by Global Geneva contributing editor and author Mark Schapiro was published on June 2, 2017 by Pacific Standard, an award-winning American magazine for readers interested in working toward forward-looking changes to private...
Leonard Cohen – That’s how the light gets in
For millions of people around the world the shock of the US election results were enormously magnified by news of the death of Leonard Cohen, 82, a singer poet icon who had long sung...
On a Slippery Slope
By Paul Ress (with comment by Global Geneva).
It was the beginning of December and too early in the season to ski, so I looked around the Swiss resort for something to do. “Why don’t...
Walking the streets of Kabul: memories and discoveries of a shadowland
Taran Khan is a former writer-in-residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Montricher, Switzerland, where she wrote and revised much of this book. (See her Global Geneva article: Living in a...
Zunar: Malaysia’s top cartoonist – How can I be neutral?
The following article is part of Global Geneva’s regular coverage of cartoonists working with Switzerland’s Cartooning for Peace Foundation., one of our media partners. For Zulkiflee S.M. Anwar...
UPDATE: French court condemns Global Geneva editor for Facebook comment in debate over destruction...
The following is an update on previous Global Geneva stories (see below) regarding this affair.
"Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers." (Voltaire)
The local Chambre Correctionnel, which is located in the department...
Geneva’s Palais des Nations scandal
Geneva could have had a Palais des Nations by Le Corbusier, the most influential architect of the 20th century. However, the League of Nations, which built the Palais overlooking Lake Geneva as...
Peace building in the time of Coronavirus
Agent Provocateur is Global Geneva's Oped section. The editors welcome well-written and accessible articles on relevant topics. President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘We’re at war’ address to the French nation on Monday...
Focus on Afghanistan: The West’s abandonment of Afghanistan: A story of arrogance, ineptitude, and...
Political cartoon by Jeff Danziger, contributing editor to Global Insights and a member of our media partner Cartooning for Peace. See additional articles on Afghanistan in Global...
Global Geneva Special Report: How dare you? They dared
Swedish climate activist 16-year-old Greta Thunberg charged the adult world community at the UN with stealing her future (and her childhood that should be spent in school) with "How dare you!"
The SIDS (small island...
Event: Constructive journalism – Getting back to real reporting (Geneva, 18 January, 2019)
The event is co-hosted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and will bring together journalists, media professionals, diplomats, students and scientists from around the world.
These are some of the questions which...
Beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The new nuclear arms race
Less than half a year ago, most of the Earth’s inhabitants could barely imagine a pandemic besieging almost the entire planet, shutting down numerous economies, and killing hundreds of thousands of people...
Sorry. Young Journalists & Writers workshop (Wednesday, 27 March 2019) at Ecogia, Versoix, is...
But please submit your stories and articles for the June, 2019 Global Geneva Youth Journalists & Writers Award. Closing date: 17 May, 2019. Send to editor@global-geneva.com
Here's a quick reminder of the details:
When?
27 March, 2019...
Brexit: A cliff hanger axing Britain’s own legs – and without a Swiss...
Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), began as a nationalist vote to free Britain to make its own decisions. But it is increasingly turning into an axe likely to chop its own...
The Democrats’ New Clothes
If the stakes are so high — as many speakers reminded us — one would think the bar would be set even higher, not lower. The nominee should prove that he can...
New gales eyeing international Geneva
US President Donald Trump has rattled more cages in a fortnight than past presidents in 50 years. It will take some time for the impacts or even the meanings of his executive orders and...
Switzerland’s proposed responsible business reforms: no great expectations
Agent Provocateur is Global Geneva’s oped section. The campaigners for the initiative were attempting to end the impunity of Swiss multinational corporations against human rights abuses and environmental...
The Hindu Kush Himalaya: An endangered “water tower” in a warming world
Mountain systems have long played a vital
role for ensuring replenishable water resources for both human survival and
natural ecosystems, for drinking, farming, hydroelectrical power, irrigation,
transportation and fishing, among other human activities. Inhabitants of...
