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- [00:05]
Podcast Narrator
The Swiss Connection Science Podcast is back with brand new stories. They're all connected by one overarching the climate challenges we face today and the smart solutions that can help us tackle them. This season, we're diving into the depths of Swiss lakes where invasive mussels are threatening the delicate indigenous ecosystem. We'll also travel to the Arctic to discover how ancient ice can reveal vital clues for pioneering climate research. And we'll explore the critical world of the semiconductor industry, looking at its global importance and Switzerland's potential role within it. All this and more is coming soon in the new season of the Swiss Connection Science Podcast.
- [00:58]
Imogen Foulkes
This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host, Imogen folks and this is a production from Swiss Info, the international public media company of Switzerland.
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Hiba Casas
In today's program, indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on ending the Gaza war have entered a third day. Senior international mediators, including the US Envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump's son in law Jared Kushner have also arrived in Sharm El Sheikh.
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Sarah Hellmuller
Women are completely absent in kind of high level politics at the moment and this high level peacemaking. However, this is the visible part.
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Hiba Casas
We're also watching in Moscow where right now President Vladimir Putin is hosting US
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Imogen Foulkes
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner,
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Hiba Casas
the President's son in law. Traditionally, we've seen that there's been low representation of women as mediators. The statistics now is under 10% of negotiators are women. In 2023. There is a systemic issue by design and how we understand peace processes that you find women are being excluded. So the talks wrapped up, but we understand the American delegation led by the president's son in law, Jared Kushner and the special envoy Steve Witkoff then went to meet with the Ukrainians, but they will be resuming the talks on Iran. We understand in about an hour.
- [02:18]
Sarah Hellmuller
Women are still working for peace every day in different conflict contexts. They are still involved in peace process, maybe not at kind of this transactional peacemaking deal making level that Trump is engaged with and that the media focuses on mostly. But these activities have not just stopped.
- [02:35]
Hiba Casas
It's very hard to say there's a blueprint. I don't believe in blueprints. I don't believe in toolboxes. I, I believe that peace is a much broader conception than political peace and it needs to be felt and experienced by the people.
- [02:56]
Imogen Foulkes
Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Imogen folks and in today's program we're going to take a look at peace building, what works, what doesn't and in particular why we see so few women in the current diplomacy over Gaza, Iran, Russia and Ukraine. I've been talking to two experts in the field.
- [03:18]
Sarah Hellmuller
My name is Sarah Hellmiller. I'm a research professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute and my specialization is in peace studies.
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Hiba Casas
My name is Siba Casas and I'm the founding executive director of the Principles for Peace foundation, which is a Geneva peace building organization and I think and do tank that supports decision making and peacemakers around the world.
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Unnamed Expert/Commentator
Russia rejected the offer of a truce and instead has been attacking Ukraine relentlessly.
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Imogen Foulkes
Tonight, violence spiraling out of control in Sudan.
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Hiba Casas
Israeli forces have bombed multiple locations across Gaza, killing at least nine Palestinians. The attacks are the latest violations of the ceasefire that came into effect four months ago.
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Imogen Foulkes
The International Committee of the Red Cross recently estimated that there are 130 armed conflict currently taking place around the world, double the number just 10 years ago. So clearly we're not going in the right direction. And yet we hear a lot about peace and claims that multiple wars have been solved.
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Donald Trump
This is one of eight wars that my administration has ended in just eight months. We're averaging one a month. There is only one left. But the eight wars my administration has ended in just eight months, there's never been anything like that.
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Hiba Casas
Never.
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Donald Trump
There never will be either.
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Imogen Foulkes
So perhaps first let's hear from peace specialist Professor Sarah Hellmuller of Geneva's Graduate Institute. How do we define peace? Is it more than the absence of violence?
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Sarah Hellmuller
It's a challenging time for peace. We know it. We're in a time where there's more talk about security than peace. But I would also say that depending on how we define peace, it's very linked to security. And how we define security also is very linked to peace. Peace.
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Imogen Foulkes
Do those definitions for us, because some people will say security is peace.
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Sarah Hellmuller
Yeah. So when we speak about peace, we can of course distinguish negative and positive peace, which is something, a distinction that is quite well known. So negative peace would be the end of violence. So the end of physical violence and positive peace would mean longer term sustainable peace. So not only the end of physical violence, but also some form of good governance in the long term and stable state society relationships.
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Imogen Foulkes
Now that we've had the definitions, we have a US President who says that he has solved eight wars. They would be the Democratic Republic of Congo, he says Gaza, Thailand, Cambodia. Mike Waltz, the US Ambassador to the UN in New York, was in Geneva just a couple of days ago. He also said the Western Sahara. I see your eyebrows very slightly raised.
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Sarah Hellmuller
Yeah, I mean, resolving wars is of course, again, we need to kind of go back to definitions. Of course, he has tried to address all of these conflicts and especially on Gaza. For instance, we had the Gaza peace plan and we saw a ceasefire actually. I mean, more or less holding. It was of course violated several times, but at least it reduced the violence. So if we are in the kind of realm of a more kind of the negative peace definition, that peace or resolving conflicts means actually reducing violence, maybe he has achieved something. But if we think about peace in terms of longer term sustainable peace, then we are still far away from a sustainable peace. If I think of the context, like drc, of course, if we look at especially the eastern part of the country, people don't yet live in what we could call kind of a positive peace situation where they have their main needs satisfied and they can sleep calmly at night without hearing gunshots.
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Imogen Foulkes
Donald Trump is getting very excited about
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Hiba Casas
his Board of Peace. He says it could solve many of the world's problems. But what is it?
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Unnamed Expert/Commentator
Who'll be on it and what will it do?
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Imogen Foulkes
US President Donald Trump would be chairman for life and have the final say on all matters.
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Donald Trump
We just created the Board of Peace, which I think is going to be amazing. I wish the United nations could do more. I wish we didn't need a Board of Peace, but the United nations and you know, with all the wars I settled, the United nations never helped me on one war.
- [07:35]
Imogen Foulkes
Well, while the conflict in DRC simmers on, we now have a brag brand new organization aimed at peacemaking. Donald Trump's much talked about Board of Peace. As we have discussed in earlier podcasts, there are many seasoned diplomats who have doubts about the board and European countries have mainly so far chosen not to get involved. So what do our two peace experts think of it? You might be surprised. Here's Hiba Casas of Principles for Peace, who as a Palestinian herself reminds us the focus of the board was originally supposed to be Gaza.
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Hiba Casas
Naturally, one has a lot of questions. You know, I'm a realist, but also I'm a possibilist. So I tend to think of the positive and the challenges at the same time. I will start with the positive. I think the positive is that there is a movement around the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The situation in Gaza has been absolutely devastating and it's a mammoth challenge. And the solution will not be between the Israelis and the Palestinians because a bilateral track have failed for the longest of times and there's an asymmetric and all of that. So this needs a regional and international response. And in this era, the fact that President Trump have initiated and pushed for a ceasefire in close collaboration with regional partners is a positive step in the right direction, because it did stop or allowed us to achieve a ceasefire. Now, the composition of the Board of Peace, as a Board of Peace, if it was only for Gaza, one would say, okay, this is a very good mechanism that would ensure that there continues to be some leverage from the US because, frankly, the only entity today that can have leverage over Israel is the United States. And having President Trump at the helm of that, with the leverage that he has over the Israeli side is a positive. And having regional players like the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks and those who also have influence over Hamas or have influence over the reconstruction or are very close, like Egypt, to the borders and have a very important role is a positive. Of course, we worry about an expanded mandate. Is it really focused on Gaza or beyond? And, of course, you do worry. And as a Palestinian, of course, I worry about the level of Palestinian participation in it, because it does not have the right level of participation. However, we do welcome any move that can advance a political solution, and the Board of Peace is one of those. But I think we still have a lot of questions around it.
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Imogen Foulkes
Sarah Helmuller, too, has questions, but wants to see the positive.
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Sarah Hellmuller
So, two things, I think. First of all, it could be worse. So, I mean, imagine that Trump didn't create the Board of Peace, but the Board of War. So. So I think it shows that peace is still something that world leaders aspire to, irrespective of how we define it
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Imogen Foulkes
or why they aspire to it, or
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Sarah Hellmuller
why they aspire to it, why they
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Imogen Foulkes
surprise hovering there, isn't it?
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Sarah Hellmuller
Exactly. But even if it's for very individualistic purposes, I'm still hopeful that something good will come out of it, even if it's, you know, whatever the motivation behind it. But if sometimes the outcomes are positive in the sense that it can reduce violence, then, I mean, I welcome anything that is kind of for the purpose of peace. Now, with regards to the Board of Peace in particular, I think it has many problematic aspects. Of course, it's very exclusive. It gives a very exclusive right to the chairman. So it's only talk about chairman, not chairperson. And it's, of course, a chairpersonship for life. Trump has an almost exclusive veto right on all decisions. And also, you know, some people have compared it to the UN Security Council. I think we're still far away from something that could even come close to the UN Security Council or even the UN Charter, which is much more aspirational. It has human rights in it.
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Imogen Foulkes
Sarah used the word exclusive. There should that sound alarm bells. When the board was formally inaugurated, the members were men in suits. What about women? Many peace negotiators suggest a peace process cannot be successful without women being included. But hibacasas has a more nuance.
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Hiba Casas
I think this is a systemic problem that in many of the high stakes rooms they default to elite actors, to uniform, to those with proximity, to force and to power and politics and incentives. And you do find a lot more focus on those who are close to the violence and force question or those who are more focused to the resources. And often in many societies these are not women. And I think traditionally we've seen that there's been low representation of women as mediators. I think the statistics now under 10% of negotiators are women in 2023 and I think 14% or so of women as mediators. It's not like there aren't women engaging around these issues. It's just that you don't find as much attention to that. And also there is a systemic issue by design, how we understand peace processes that you find women are being excluded. Having said that, I want to say something and it might not be, you know, make me very popular. You know, there's also a lot of emphasis on inclusion as representation and it becomes a bit of a ticking the box exercise. Is it about counting the women or making women voices and perspectives count? So I do call for inclusiveness beyond the narrow understanding of representation. It has to be meaningful, it has to be influential and it also needs to be rooted in society and rooted with those with links to power, politics and incentives. And I do believe that women, we bring a different, different style of leadership into these processes which is fundamentally linked to how we can build legitimacy around these processes.
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Imogen Foulkes
That word legitimacy is one we keep coming back to. How is a peace process really legitimate? How can a peace be sustained if the process is not inclusive? Sarah Helmuller does find the absence of women concerning particularly because even just a few years ago there seemed to be much more awareness that women needed to be involved.
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Sarah Hellmuller
This is really quite worrisome. I think this is a general trend that we see in peacemaking. So we see a shift, I would say, from the comprehensive peacemaking that aspires towards conflict resolutions or towards a comprehensive peace agreement through an inclusive and impartial process, which especially in the 1990s was kind of the dominant way to make peace, often led of course, by the United nations, we see a shift away from this kind of way to address conflicts towards a transactional peacemaking approach. And this transactional approach is focused most of all on a kind of more bilateral deal making, short term, so more the negative peace reduction of violence objective. Plus, as you mentioned, it's very exclusive. So it doesn't necessarily aspire to also include broader societal actors in peace negotiations, peace building, but it's just focus on the main belligerents and mostly on male military actors.
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Imogen Foulkes
Some people might say, I'll just play devil's advocate with you here. Some people might say, well, but if that approach works, let's do it, let's do the transactional. That's what these guys understand. What would you say to counter that? I mean, give me an example of an inclusive peace process. Women have been involved in that you can point to and say that worked.
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Sarah Hellmuller
So we know. I mean, an example would of course be Colombia, which is frequently mentioned, where women and also other societal group, victims group and civil society played a very important role in the peace process. And research has shown that peace agreement that were negotiated with the participation of societal actors, civil society and women, that they are more durable. So we have clear evidence for that. I think. I wouldn't dismiss the transactional approach completely sometimes we have also seen that in some peace processes we need at least a moment of exclusive talks with the Belgians because they are the ones who hold the weapons. So they need to agree to stop shooting at each other. Let me put it bluntly like this, but this is not the end of this may be a beginning, this may be part of a peace process, but we need much more for the peace agreement or the peace deal, whatever it is, to be sustainable in the long
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Imogen Foulkes
term, it needs to include also society, inclusivity, legitimacy. But what we have seen right here in Geneva, over Ukraine and over Iran are small groups of men, they talk about peace, but a phrase they also use very often is we need to make a deal. Perhaps the word peace means different things to different people. Hiba Casas warns against the word being hijacked by those who will not have to live with the consequences of a failed peace process.
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Hiba Casas
I think this has really been a problem, and frankly, why Principles for Peace was created was to address this issue that there's such a narrow dominance of the understanding of what peace delivers. For so long we've equated peace processes with cessations of hostilities or ceasefires. And what at best we've been successful at as international community is achieving A series of ceasefires. But where we fail is in sustaining peace or preventing conflict in many cases. So there is a narrow understanding of peace and at principles for peace based on global evidence. So this is not my personal opinion, this is based in evidence. There's a much broader conception of peace for those who live it. It's peace that delivers legitimacy, peace that is anchored in accountable security and security as a public good, not as excessive use of force, its protection of civilians, it's dignity, its access to services. So it's a much broader understanding of peace. And at the heart of a sustainable peace, there needs to be two key anchors. One is legitimacy, trust in institutions, accountable governance, accountable security. And the second part is also dign people experience peace in their daily life and how the state society relationship are structured also around that. So we do have a problem in how we think about peace and we do have a problem in how we design peace processes. The problem today, I think in the global peacemaking spaces is not reaching agreements. The biggest challenge today the problem is operational. It's how do you move from ceasefires into sustainable implementation of agreements? And the evidence shows us, you know, in the past three decades, 90% of conflicts have happened in countries that experienced civil war before. So it's not a question that we are not able to broker agreements, it's a question of implementing these agreements. And a third of peace agreements go completely unimplemented. And Gaza today is the ultimate test. It is one of these examples. How do we move from a ceasefire, from a framework, from even a Security Council resolution that provided for the longest of times a frame and security council resolution 2803 in having also a structure around transitional governance, stabilization force and a mechanism to mobilize investment into delivering tangible good governance to the people, reconstruction, restoration of basic services, dignity to the people of Gaza, who 90% of them are displaced. So this is a very concrete example. And we can also think about what's happening in Ukraine, a very different set up. So it's very hard to say there's a blueprint. I don't believe in blueprints, I don't believe in toolboxes. I believe that peace is a much broader conception than political peace and it needs to be felt and experienced by the people and they determine how that translates into their daily lives.
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Imogen Foulkes
That's another reason for including women. The women of Gaza, Russia or Ukraine will have to live daily with the consequences of the decision made by those men in suits or uniforms. Will those men think rebuilding hospitals should take priority over restarting businesses. Will it be important to demine the paths children take to school as fast as possible? Sarah Helmuller suggests that although left out of the big performative diplomacy we have seen from the board of Peace, women are still trying to ensure they have a say.
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Sarah Hellmuller
Women are completely absent in kind of high level politics at the moment and this high level peacemaking. However, I think what we have to consider is that this is the visible part and our kind of focus has been so much on Trump and, and I think he has really taken the focus away from all the other things that are still happening. So women are still working for peace every day in different conflict contexts. They are still having peace processes, being involved in peace processes, maybe not at this transactional, peacemaking, deal making level that Trump is engaged with and that the media focuses on mostly, but these activities have not just stopped. Having said that, I think there is now more need for all of us who still believe in this more comprehensive approach to peacemaking. Things that we took for granted, we can no longer take for granted. So it means we really need to think what is truly important to us and then build the coalitions around those values and really fight for it.
- [21:33]
Imogen Foulkes
And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. My thanks to Sarah Helmuller and to Hiba Casas for their time and their perspectives. We hope you enjoyed the program and do join us again in two weeks when we'll be asking a question that right now everyone in Geneva seems to be asking. Can multilateralism, and in particular the United nations, survive? And if the answer is yes, what should a new reformed UN look like?
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Unnamed UN Expert/Commentator
It's worth remembering that when the UN Charter was adopted in 1945, 50 countries were present at the table. And today there are 193 member states. So almost three quarters of the UN's membership has not had a say in the rules of the game that they are now bound by and are very frustrated by that lack of voice and representation on many fronts.
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Unnamed Expert/Commentator
The UN is doing indispensable work every day. You know, bringing food to hungry people, ensuring practical standards, how we cooperate on the planet. And, you know, most countries follow the UN rules and principles on an everyday basis. So not too bad. You know, Doug Hammarskull said that the UN was not made to take us to heaven, but to prevent us from going to hell. And I mean, that's still, you know, after 1945, there's been no new world
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Unnamed UN Expert/Commentator
wars for the UN. Overall, I think it's going to go through a very difficult and dark period. I hope that coming out of that, you know, sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom, that coming out of that, we can emerge with what I often refer to as a new global social contract. And if that difficult period leads us to something better, then that's something worth fighting for.
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Unnamed Expert/Commentator
History is that after every severe crisis we come together and try to make a better system, which is what happened after the two world Wars. First you had the not so successful attempt of the League of Nations, but then the much more successful, successful UN also learning from what was wrong with the League of Nations. I hope we don't need to relearn this through the third world war or anything like that.
- [23:36]
Imogen Foulkes
Join us on April 14th for that. A reminder. You've been listening to Inside Geneva, a Swiss info production. You can subscribe to us and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Check out our previous episodes how the International Red Cross Unites Prisoners of War with Their Families or why Survivors of Human Rights Violations Turn to the UN In Geneva for Justice. I'm Imogen folks. Thanks again for listening.
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Unnamed UN Expert/Commentator
Sam.