Imogen Folks
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
with great, great difficulty. And I think we could perhaps put this in a bit of context that these moves to cut aid have been coming really for quite a while in terms of the attitude of the traditional donors to humanitarian aid. We had the financial crisis way back in 2008 and many countries had austerity, wealthy countries.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
And voters have just been saying for a long time, why are we spending money overseas when we should be spending it on us? What about my school? What about my hospital? Then we had Covid, which again exhausted the budgets of many, many governments. And we have a weariness. There always seems to be a new war and a new crisis. That's the mindset of voters.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
And of course, that's influencing governments.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
but aid agencies would say all of this is also an utter failure of international diplomacy not to solve conflicts or prevent them that's why we have new ones not for example to even agree modest trade rules which might support low-income countries and emerging economies not to tackle climate change which contributes we know to displacement and to hunger
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
And that cutting aid funding now, when there's a record number of people in need in the world, will make all those challenges even worse. And although we want to look after ourselves, we can't build walls and moats around our countries anymore. That's not the way the world works. But I'm not sure that those appeals will have any influence whatsoever.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
There's been a slight misuse of the substance.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
I've had response this morning from UN refugees and from the international campaign to ban landmines. That last one has already had to stop programs because of the US cuts. Now, landmines are are appealing to Britain's traditional generosity in terms of demining, pointing out that it's such a good investment in terms of returning a country to stability, allowing towns and communities
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
to live again without fear, children to go to school, farmers in particular to plant their crops, trying to remind donors that this kind of humanitarian project is a really good investment. UN refugees much more tight-lipped, but again pointing to Britain's traditional generosity and hoping that some of this will continue.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
I mean, it's an incredibly long list. We have, for example, HIV prevention. Some of those programs, again, because of the U.S. cuts, have already been stopped. And one of the really worrying things for the aid agencies, if we just think about the context of the British cuts, is this freeze by the U.S.,
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
Things, for example, like maternal health clinics in Afghanistan, mine clearance in Colombia, all sorts of different things which are going to stop.
Global News Podcast
Bibas family funeral takes place in Israel
And these are, you know, they're not always the programmes which make the news headlines, but they are ones, aid agencies would say, which make a huge difference to people's lives and which also contribute to the security and stability, which, frankly, I think we're all longing for at the moment.
Global News Podcast
Trump calls Zelensky a 'dictator'
Did your partner forget Valentine's Day this year? Did a man just spring to mind? Whilst it's commonly thought that men have a laissez-faire attitude towards romantic gestures, a new study finds the opposite to be true.
Global News Podcast
Trump calls Zelensky a 'dictator'
Researchers from the Humboldt University of Berlin used anonymous surveys and more than 50 psychological and sociological studies to find, on average, heterosexual men tend to want a relationship more than women and are more likely to confess their love first. The main author of the paper, Iris Waring, explains one of the reasons why.
Global News Podcast
Trump calls Zelensky a 'dictator'
But she says it's not just about wanting to get physical.
Global News Podcast
Trump calls Zelensky a 'dictator'
The study also found that men are less likely to initiate breakups and more likely to suffer from them. So why then is there a stereotype that men are less romantic than women? Why do so many romantic movies have a female protagonist yearning for a male partner when this research shows it's the other way around? Maybe this is because they can.
Global News Podcast
Trump calls Zelensky a 'dictator'
Iris Waring is hopeful that the study can begin to change attitudes towards gender, romance and relationships.
Global News Podcast
Roof collapse at Dominican Republic nightclub kills scores of people
Mit mehr, hier ist Imogen Folks in Geneva, wo mehrere UN-Bodies sind.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
The United States is the single biggest contributor to United Nations humanitarian aid. We're talking tens of billions of dollars in some areas. I mean, think about the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we've seen a really serious upsurge in the conflict in the last couple of weeks. The United States provided more than half of the aid funding there last year.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
We're talking about programs against sexual violence, support for victims, food, vaccination, all that kind of stuff. Interestingly, proportionately, though, in terms of its own wealth and in the size of its economy, the US is not the most generous contributor at all. But because it's such a big economy, the actual loss in cash jumps is absolutely huge.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
Afghanistan was actually one of the countries we were hearing about this morning. Now, it is a country in humanitarian crisis. It has one of the highest levels of maternal mortality in the world. I mean, think about this. Every two hours, a woman dies in Afghanistan because of complications in pregnancy.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
A small UN agency, or one of the smaller ones, the UN Population Fund, it runs maternal health clinics in Afghanistan, and they serve hundreds of thousands of women. They are mostly women-led services, which is not easy to do in Afghanistan nowadays, but this agency does do it. They have been told not just that their future funds are cancelled, their current funds must not be spent anymore.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
Well, there's another one which hasn't been getting too much attention at the moment, which did for me personally cause some shock, and that is demining. So we know that unfortunately mines and unexploded ordnance lie around in countries from Ukraine to Bosnia to Syria, but many of those programmes are also now, the funding has been suspended.
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
Well, I think we know if we look at the back and forth about trade tariffs over the last 48 hours, that what is said from the White House doesn't always necessarily end up a done deal. But I think that the humanitarian agencies, they are all focused
Global News Podcast
Trump and Netanyahu meet at the White House
frantically assessing the consequences and really expecting, knowing really that they will have to make cuts and that these will affect some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
Global News Podcast
Erdogan calls Turkey protests 'evil' as unrest continues
In 2004, HIV-AIDS claimed more than 2 million lives. In 2023, deaths were down to 600,000. The U.S. funding cuts risk reversing years of progress and allowing infections to surge unchecked. U.N. AIDS programs across Africa received stop-work orders in January, and already mother and child prevention clinics have closed, and treatment centres have run out of drugs.
Global News Podcast
Erdogan calls Turkey protests 'evil' as unrest continues
Winnie Bienima pleaded with the US, the single biggest funder of HIV programmes, to reverse its decision immediately, and even offered President Trump what she described as a deal to market a new, US-developed antiretroviral injection to millions of people.
Global News Podcast
China vows to fight US 'blackmail' over tariffs
We know that the new US administration was going to take a long, hard look at its funding for humanitarian aid around the world. And just every UN agency and others, non-governmental organisations, the International Red Cross, they were all put on notice that the funding was being reviewed. And then eventually they would be told whether this funding would be continued or not.
Global News Podcast
China vows to fight US 'blackmail' over tariffs
Now increasingly aid agencies are getting the confirmation that the funding will be stopped forever. That it appears is what the World Food Programme has got for some really critical operations it has in, for example, Afghanistan or Yemen.
Global News Podcast
China vows to fight US 'blackmail' over tariffs
Well, we have significant proportions of children, millions of children in both countries already suffering from malnutrition. Now, these are countries that have been rocked by conflict for years and years and years. We know that Yemen not so long ago approached famine, and that was to a certain extent averted by the efforts of agencies like the World Food Programme.
Global News Podcast
China vows to fight US 'blackmail' over tariffs
We know already, for example, in Afghanistan, that the UN Population Fund has had its funding cut. It has had to close maternal mother and child health clinics. Now, Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. So, no, the short answer to your question is people will die. Imagine, folks.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence
What UNICEF says, it estimates, as you said, some of the figures are coming from officials from the health ministry in Gaza, that around 1,000 children, 100 a day, have been killed or maimed in the last decade. Now, some of these children were reportedly already in hospital. Al Nasser Hospital was hit on March 23rd. So it's basically kind of what UNICEF has been saying for a very long time.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence
There is just nowhere safe. In Gaza, for children or indeed for anyone, UN compounds have been hit. The International Committee of the Red Cross also. And now, just in the last couple of days, we've learned of these shocking killings of 15 aid workers, the Red Crescent UN Civil Defence Committee.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence
And today, one aid worker who spent a lot of time in Gaza said, you're just seeing daily multiple violations of international law. And there's a real frustration among aid agencies. Part of their job is to kind of uphold international law, that this just keeps on happening and that their own colleagues are being killed. Hundreds of aid workers have been killed in Gaza, as we know.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence
Very limited. They are still there and trying to work, although we do know the UN has reduced its footprint because since the first week of March, there has been a complete blockade on supplies or aid workers. getting in and out. So food and medicines are getting very low. Half of the ambulances now cannot work because there's fuel shortages or they have been damaged in the conflict.
Global News Podcast
Myanmar remembers earthquake dead with a minute's silence
So it's really worse than challenging for the population.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
It's not the first report carried out by this commission of inquiry into the human rights situation in Gaza and the occupied territories. We've had one that looked specifically at the situation for health care, things like denial of access of humanitarian supplies and so on. This one looks at this particular aspect. Now, we do know that many, many Palestinian men and boys were
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
have been detained since October the 7th. And what this report contains is their accounts of how they have been treated. Some have been released, some have lawyers visiting them. And these are the kinds of accounts that we're getting. There is a pattern, this is what Chris Sidoti there in the clip was saying to you, there is a common pattern of being detained in
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
stripped, held naked in the cold for many days, then taken to a prison inside Israel, beaten, sometimes raped. Now, some of these people who've endured this actually came to Geneva this week and testified in public. So important, they said, was it to them? to get the message out there.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
I would say, of course, that Israel has rejected this and said it always investigates members of the armed forces who may have or allegedly have behaved badly. There's little faith that that is really happening from the UN team. They say there appears to be a climate of impunity.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
This is a particularly interesting aspect of this report because the legal definition of genocide is very, very narrow. But one of the definitions is an attempt to suppress or stop births among a particular group, ethnic or religious group.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
Now, what the report suggests is that the deliberate attacks on maternity clinics and particularly the deliberate attack on Gaza's only fertility clinic, where thousands of embryos were actually destroyed. that this could be, they're not saying definitively, but they're saying that this could fall under this particular clause and could show genocidal intent.
Global News Podcast
Senior Putin aide against temporary Ukraine ceasefire
Quite incendiary, but these are human rights lawyers, so they look at all the evidence, and this was their conclusion.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
The money will come from the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund. The UN this morning is talking about brutal cuts, although it doesn't specifically mention the United States.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
Now, the Central Emergency Fund, to just give you some context, it was set up 20 years after the Asian tsunami to be a pot of money for really unexpected events like a tsunami, like an earthquake, like a war breaking out and suddenly driving millions of people from their homes. That is now being deployed for the UN's day-to-day work. So health in Afghanistan, to Sudan, things like that.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
What I would say is that it's not really clear that $110 million will go very far when you think that the UN had appealed for $45 billion to fund its aid operations across the globe this year with more and more people in need. It's received of that 45 billion. OK, it's only March, but basically it's received about 3 billion.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
So I think it's very, very difficult times for the UN and its humanitarian work. 110 million will help, but I don't think it will go too far.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
The list is incredibly long. The US was a very big funder of humanitarian aid, not by head of population the biggest. Some European countries send proportionately much more, but it was still, because the US is a big economy, a lot of money. We have a complete stop on funding for UNAIDS, which does AIDS prevention, including in children.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
We have cuts in Ebola surveillance in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We have a stop on things like demining in Cambodia or Colombia. I had a statement this morning from the agency working on tuberculosis prevention, which also monitors, by the way, drug-resistant TB, which is a global health threat. That also is suffering cuts.
Global News Podcast
Von der Leyen: 'Europe is at a watershed'
So basically, wherever you turn, wherever there is a humanitarian or global health challenge, money is being cut.
Global News Podcast
UN Secretary-General warns US against 'ethnic cleansing' in Gaza
Argentina's decision to leave, though nowhere near as financially damaging as Washington's, is still a slap in the face for the World Health Organization. Just two days ago, the WHO Director General urged member states to persuade the US to reconsider, pointing to global successes against polio and life-saving programs on HIV-AIDS, TB and malaria. But the WHO has become a political football.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
These were snails that were at risk of extinction or thought to be actually extinct in the wild. That's Chester Zoo's invertebrate keeper, Imogen. So we were lucky enough to... have them brought to us and this is where we've managed to breed up from very low numbers to what we have here today which is almost like 1,400 snails ready for a release.
Global News Podcast
Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos
I'm high in the Swiss Alps, 3,300 metres above sea level. People come from all over the world to see these views, soaring snow-capped peaks and the blue ice of glaciers. But it's a view that's changing. Global warming is causing glaciers to melt at record levels. 273 billion tonnes of ice is disappearing every year.
Global News Podcast
Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos
Michael Ksemp of the World Glacier Monitoring Service says we're already feeling the effects in rising sea levels.
Global News Podcast
Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos
Glaciers are also a crucial source of fresh water. They store the winter snow and release it in spring and summer for crops and drinking water. Less ice means disrupted water supplies, flooding and landslides. Sulanya Mishra of the World Meteorological Organization says the consequences will affect us all.
Global News Podcast
Heathrow shutdown causes travel chaos
Every slight increase in the Earth's temperature speeds up the thaw. If we don't act to limit global warming, scientists say, most of the glaciers I can see up here will be gone by the end of this century. And if that happens, they warn, we will lose so much more than a beautiful view.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
Regarding the collapse, Credit Suisse, before the takeover, had been in trouble. It was known it was in trouble, or not doing well anyway, making losses for quite some time. But it appears that nobody outside of the bank itself really, really understood how serious it was, except the rest of the world, except the world's financial markets.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
which were going into freefall, if you remember, in the days before this forced takeover. So much so, the Swiss government had to meet over the weekend while the markets were closed and announce this forced takeover late on a Sunday night.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
So the report today, as you said in your introduction, mismanagement, very risky financial strategies, overexposed to some dodgy financial deals and complacent management. And it appears very greedy management with those big bonuses where the report does offer some support, as it says that the government itself was not particularly supportive.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
I think we were talking, if you remember, of another financial meltdown like 2008. Let's not forget Credit Suisse is a huge bank, not just in Switzerland, but globally has had its finger in many, many, many financial pies and a big bank. Failing like that, as we saw with Lehman Brothers in 2008, affects the entire global financial system, which is why the government forced this takeover.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
I think I wouldn't underestimate the disillusionment of Swiss citizens about this, because they had to stump up in 2008 for a bailout of the other big Swiss bank, UBS. They thought Credit Suisse was the more staid and reliable one. Until, you know, spring of 2023, when again, a massive, massive spotlight on Switzerland for all the wrong reasons. You know, they have a reputation for reliability.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
Gone. And now two huge banks they were proud of. Now just one. A lot of responsibility resting on UBS's shoulders, I think.
Global News Podcast
Dozens killed in clashes in Syria
Of course, you are an expert on the laws of war. Your suggestion is that these laws of war, actually, there's an awful lot of stuff which is genuinely forbidden. I mean, do you think the people fighting now don't know? Or are they stretching the law to breaking point? I mean, not just the Middle East, we could also look at Russia, Ukraine, for example.
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland, all fearful of the threat from Russia, say they plan to leave the landmine treaty. In the UK, former Defence Minister Ben Wallace has hinted Britain should do the same. The plans have caused outrage.
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
Tamar Gabelnik, director of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the international campaign to ban landmines, says using mines doesn't even make sense militarily.
Global News Podcast
South Korean court upholds impeachment of president
Since the mine ban came into force, the use of landmines has fallen dramatically and huge areas of land have been cleared, allowing people to plant crops, return to work or go to school. Even countries which didn't sign up to the treaty, among them the U.S. and Russia, stopped using them until recently. But now Russia has laid mines in Ukraine. The U.S. has supplied mines to Kiev to fight back.