Global Geneva • October/November 2017 • Issue #3

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Swiss banks and Latin American money laundering COVER STORY

Water & Peace: Made in Switzerland IUCN

Going for the Big Picture on SDGs

FROM THE FIELD

Saying Goodbye to Afghanistan’s Ghosts & Dreams

ISSUE 03 • OCT/NOV 2017 • SWITZERLAND 8CHF • FRANCE 8EUR

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

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What’s in this issue?

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 SEE MORE ONLINE @ WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

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FROM THE EDITOR How to Communicate International Geneva’s Global View

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COVER STORIES Water & Peace: Made in Switzerland

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COVER STORIES

14 |MEDIATING BLUE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Turning Water Drama into Geneva’s blue wave of peace

16 |MPs BET ON WATER DIPLOMACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND - CERN

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FROM THE FIELD

Gerald Durrell’s Legacy: My Career & Other Animals

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FROM THE FIELD Saying Goodbye to Afghanistan’s Ghosts and Dreams

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GLOBAL GENEVANS

Inger Andersen: No One Can Go at it Alone on Sustainable Development

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA Swiss Banks & Money Laundering in the Shadows of Latin American Democracy

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TOM’S PAINE Welcome to the New World of Information Warfare

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GLOBAL GENEVANS David Horobin 35 |KLAUS SCHWAB: GENEVA’S

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40 |

The Right Place for a Human Rights Award

AGENT PROVOCATEUR

UNLIKELIEST REVOLUTIONARY PADDLING FOR CANCER: REACHING OUT WITH SUCCESS

42 |KEEPING UP THE GOOD FIGHT FOR GLOBAL TRADE

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR Whistleblowing & Abuse: A Time for Real Reform

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TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES Living in a Treehouse: The Jan Michalski Writers-in-Residence Programme

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BOOK REVIEWS Death of Translator: Putting PTSD on the Front Page

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56 |UNBREAKABLE? RECOGNISING

A Swiss Makes an Artistic Splash in the City of Brotherly Love

58 |HUMANITARIAN ETHICS

HUMANITARIAN STRESS AND TRAUMA

TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES

60 |BOOK REVIEWS: MORGES LITERARY FESTIVAL

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69 |PRINCE SADRUDDIN AGA KHAN:

FROM THE FIELD Mike DuBose: A photojournalist’s journey

HUMANITARIAN & VISIONARY

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TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES Confession of an unrepentant foodie: The City with the Best Food in the World

How to communicate International Geneva’s global view FROM THE EDITOR

LIVING IN THE LAKE GENEVA AREA, on whichever side of the border, we cannot help but be aware of the critical importance – and force – of water in the quality of our lives and the needs of the regions around us. Switzerland is often referred to as Europe’s ‘water tower’. With its higher mountains still covered with snow at the height of summer – even if, sadly, the glaciers are fast receding – the nation still has an abundance of water as well as long-developed and sophisticated water technology to feed the streams and rivers and share this resource with neighbouring countries.

Today Switzerland is also determined to be a global leader in water management.

We see a different perspective to take on water issues. It’s one of the easiest ways to make clear what the United Nations is talking about when it promotes the sustainability of planetary resources. The label itself is too much of a mouthful for some to grasp. Focusing on water – and the problems surrounding water resources and use – gives ordinary people not caught up in the jargon of sustainable development a way to understand exactly what is at stake.

As our cover stories indicate, Switzerland can play a vital role as a source of expertise and political neutrality that could help promote greater collaboration in peaceful water usage worldwide, including areas caught up in strife. The coming together of belligerents, such as the Israelis and Palestinians, or players in potential conflicts – Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan – over the Nile, can bring a more equitable distribution of water with changes that benefit all.

But is Switzerland’s self-styled ‘Blue Peace’ initiative that important? Should we really care about what it has to offer in the way of water expertise, innovation and quiet diplomacy? Or the highlighting of these issues as a critical journalistic responsibility for reaching out to local or global audiences, regardless whether they live in Geneva, London, New York, Shanghai or Ouagadougou?

GENEVA: A BRAND NAME FOR GLOBAL OUTREACH Geneva, as a brand name to market such efforts, can play an essential role with its reputation as a hub of international cooperation. It is also a unique goldmine of knowledge on planetary themes ranging from humanitarian response and culture to oil commodities, human rights and access to health. There is where the International Geneva community has a responsibility to ensure that what it represents is properly reported. It also needs to recognize that English is one of the best ways for doing this.

Without denigrating other languages, we recognize that English is increasingly the tongue for neutral communication among the Swiss themselves, particularly for business, science, technology and development. It is also a vehicle for bridging linguistic and cultural divides. Of course, it is equally crucial to communicate in German, French, Arabic, Chinese and other languages, but this we leave to better qualified media partners willing to take on the challenge.

Geneva itself is a designation that represents global concerns and even the global citizen. Henry Dunant, the Genevan initiator of the Red Cross, made his name with his action in favour of wounded soldiers after seeing them in Italy. His initiative eventually embraced a world-wide movement, even if it did take 40 years for Geneva to properly recognize him. Today, various groups and individuals, whether the EPFL, CERN, ArtBasel or the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights, command an influence in innovation, ideas, culture and public awareness across the planet.

A TRUSTED JOURNALISM THAT ENGAGES THE PUBLIC Hence, our ‘Global Genevans’, a section in the magazine, can come from anywhere in the world. For example, IUCN’s Inger Andersen, who is Danish, works in Gland and is featured in this edition. Andersen stresses the need to tackle the SDGs as one. Clean energy and conflict mediation, for example, cannot be divorced from food security, climate change and education. They’re all part of the Big Picture.

And even though the SDGs do not include independent journalism and the right to reliable information as a goal, it is clear that reporting in the public interest is one of the most dynamic ways for putting the message across.

Over the past decades, there have been several attempts to establish an English-language publication aimed at the International Geneva scene. Most have vanished. It is

comprehensible that some will conclude there is simply no market, or there are not enough interested readers.

The feedback for Global Geneva, based on its first two editions, however, has shown us that there is not only a high level of interest, but a critical need for such a publication. Most people, for example, have no idea what an SDG is. So putting across how these goals affect us is one our challenges. Our audiences include a remarkably diverse community of well-travelled and informed UN, NGO, banking, diplomatic, educational, communications, student and business players. Many are living and working in Switzerland and across the border, but we are also seeing a steadily rising number of readers from around the globe.

In many ways, Global Geneva is perhaps best perceived as a ‘local’ magazine with a world-wide outreach.

What is more, Global Geneva is intensively read. In these times when mainstream media face unassailable competition from digital news, it is interesting that our readers devour the print edition more thoroughly – as some have told us, virtually every article. Whether print or online, people seem to want compelling stories with insight that explore key issues, ideas and lifestyles.

A COMMON RESPONSIBILITY AND A SHARED PROCESS As with anyone producing a magazine in an age when content is so easily manipulated, good journalism is the only truly effective means for countering false news, propaganda and other forms of disinformation. We are particularly worried about how young people obtain their news. Hence our involvement with international high schools, colleges and universities in a bid to help students discern what is credible or not, notably in social media.

So, back to the question: does international Geneva need a global English-language magazine?

Any credible journalistic venture today needs to be linked to a common responsibility and a shared process. We want Global Geneva to be an independent publication, a sort of Everyman’s platform of trust, shared by all willing to participate in this process. It’s a long road from Gutenberg’s first printed page. One can imagine the even greater challenge to turn all the bits and bytes of global information streams into a common understanding that allows reasonable progress. But this means thinking outside the expected parameters, questioning what is happening, and coming up with solutions by everyone, whether entrepreneurs, innovators, thinkers, activists, policy-makers, lawyers, diplomats, journalists or students...

Edward Girardet, editor

L’INTÉGRALE

Tous les écrits d’Anne Frank rassemblés pour la première fois et accompagnés de documents exceptionnels.

LE ROMAN GRAPHIQUE Découvrez le Journal d’Anne Frank en images, par les créateurs de Valse avec Bachir.

Le Anne Frank Fonds et l’UNICEF sont partenaires pour protéger les enfants dans le monde.

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Hospitals, patients, medical staff, ambulances are

#NotATarget In two years, 180 aerial bombings and shelling attacks hit MSF hospitals or supported facilities in: Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Sudan.

Š Andrew Quilty

Medical doctors have an ethical obligation to treat all sick and wounded without any discrimination based on race, religion, philosophy or politics.

http://notatarget.msf.org 9

MANA NEYESTANI, IRAN

WITH SUPPORT FROM

EDITORS

Editor & Founder Edward Girardet (Geneva) America’s Editor William Dowell (New York) Francophone Editor Daniel Wermus (Geneva) Assistant Editor Chris Woodburn (Geneva) Photo Editor Tala Skari (Paris) Publishing Director Timothy Weaver (London) CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Leyla Alyanak (Geneva), Edward Barnes (New York), Jeff Carmel (San Diego), Mary Fitzgerald (Marseille), Julian Gearing (Bangkok), Peter Hulm (Erschmatt), Elizabeth Kemf (Geneva), Peter Kenny (Geneva), Donatella Lorch (Ankara), Jean MacKenzie (Kabul), Mort Rosenblum (Paris), Mark Schapiro (San Francisco), Peyman Pejman (Paris), Charles Norchi (Maine) CARTOONISTS

Hani Abbas (Geneva) Jeff Danziger (New York) POETRY EDITOR

Carla Drysdale (Geneva) VISION, COMMUNITY & COMPLIANCE

Caroline Hunt-Matthes (Geneva) DESIGN, WEB & LAYOUT

Nathaniel Daudrich (Paris) ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION

For further information, contact: editor@global-geneva.com EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD

Veronique Barbey, Xavier Cornut, Michael Keating, Anselm Zurfluh, EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Jonathan Randal, Ahmed Rashid, Kim Gordon-Bates

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COVER STORIES

WATER & PEACE

Made in Switzerland Landlocked Switzerland may lie mainly hundreds of km from the sea, but water plays a big role in its mythology, history and international presence. As contributing editor Peter Hulm writes, the Swiss Navy is famous, to those who know about it.

Its 49 commercial ships make it the largest merchant fleet of a landlocked country, in front of Mongolia. The Lake Geneva region gives Switzerland another claim to fame: international action to use water as a tool for peace among nations and for international cooperation.

ADMIRAL OF THE SWISS NAVY is the derisive term used in the U.S. military for someone with an overbearing sense of self-importance. Swiss Navy is also the name of a silicone lubricant in the U.S. But Switzerland has no military navy, of course. It does have a company-sized naval unit, a flotilla of patrol boats for its lakes that are part of the Swiss Army’s Corps of Engineers. They are used mainly for search and rescue as well as policing Switzerland’s water borders.

The Swiss merchant navy, however, does play a role in national security. It was created during the Second World War in 1941, to ensure the country secured basic commodities through ships flying a neutral flag, but vessels never sail within sight of Swiss soil and only one percent of their crews are Swiss.

Under Swiss law, the government can still commandeer into national service the private vessels from the six companies that own them.

Just as important is what Switzerland’s water specialists call “blue energy”. The hydro-resources locked up in its glaciers, snowtops, lakes and rivers feed both the North Sea and the Mediterranean through the Rhine and the Rhone. Other rivers feed into the Danube to the north-east and the Po valley to the south.

At the beginning of the 1970s, hydropower accounted

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for almost 90 percent of domestic electricity production.

With the advent of nuclear power, this has since dropped to 56 percent. The government estimates the production of its 643 main hydropower plants at 1.8 billion Swiss francs.

The country also has 103 lakes over 30 hectares in area, a number that may increase because of climate change with fast-melting glaciers and snowfields creating new bodies of water.

They are firmly anchored in Swiss mythology. The Swiss national (and probably mythic) hero William Tell escaped from the tyrannical Hapsburg bailiff on Lake Lucerne because of his familiarity with warm fall winds.

This enabled him to take over the tyrant’s boat during a storm.

In the 18th century, the irascible Genevan writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau took refuge on the Isle de SaintPierre in the Lake of Bienne from July to October 1965.

Drifting on the lake, the 53-year-old Rousseau said he could finally “feel my existence with pleasure, without any effort to think”. The island became the centre-piece of his final book, The Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Saint-Pierre is now a place of pilgrimage but Rousseau’s English biographer Leo Damrosch has pointed out: “While Rousseau is remembered in Geneva by an Isle Rousseau that didn’t yet exist in his day, he is remembered at the Lac de Bienne

by an island that isn’t one any longer”. A regional public works project in the 1870s lowered the water level by two metres and joined the island to the mainland.

In fact, the Swiss regions suffering from water scarcity have brought Switzerland recent fame among environmentalists, academics and political planners. “Bisses” (Suonen in German) are open channels, also found in other mountain regions such as Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush, taking water from the high meadows of the Valais to its dry lower valleys for cattle, irrigation, drinking water and vineyards. Dating back at least to Roman times (traces of at least five have been found in the floodplain region near Sierre), bisses flourished in the 14th century and after when it became profitable to breed beef cattle for international trade.

In the 1930s many fell into disuse as engineers installed pipes and mechanized water dispersion systems. The 1980s saw a resurgence of interest in them, often from tourists.

Among the fans was Elinor Ostrom, a “poor kid” from California who had become a political science professor.

What she found out about the water management system for bisses became the foundation of the theoretical work that won her a share of the 2009 Nobel economics prize.

She found eight “design principles” for stable allocation of resources shared in a common pool. Basically, they set out

rules to ensure that local people in the communities got equal rights and responsibilities for managing the bisses— and other shared resources.

What made her discoveries so important was that the system doesn’t require government to oversee them, or even individual ownership — the conventional answer until then to “the tragedy of the commons”.

“Control the water and you control everything.”

THE MAYOR OF DIRT IN RANGO (2011) The resort of Crans-Montana has deliberately applied the Ostrom principles in managing its water channels.

They have also been used elsewhere for everything from protecting Pacific salmon and the spotted owl to designing a public park. The revival of interest in these traditional water courses — many still used — has led the official Swiss network of hiking trails to put 94 bisse walks on its list.

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COVER STORY | WATER & PEACE: MADE IN SWITZERLAND

Something very similar to Ostrom’s principles were operated in a Geneva-based initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme that the U.N. Secretary-General of the time described as “the jewel in UNEP’s crown”.

Founded in 1974, the Regional Seas Programme operated across the world from Geneva for 12 years, with its officers keeping in touch by phone and plane on a day-to-day, almost minute-to-minute, basis with whatever was going on in their region. Most of its early success is attributed to its dynamic Croatian Director, Stjepan Keckes, and the team built up around him.

The first achievement was in the Mediterranean, with a 1976 agreement that brought Israel and the Arab States, plus the North and South, together. Another 17 agreements followed along with a stream of scientific reports and popular brochures on issues such as marine mammals, climate change and the Mediterranean. “In some areas like the Caribbean and Mediterranean it fostered a sense of a shared problem and a search for common solutions,” says Carl Gustav Lundin, Director of the Global Marine and Polar Programme of IUCN. Longtime UNEP stalwart Arthur Dahl notes: “It used the environment to build collaboration between governments that otherwise would not have worked together.”

Keckes made the Regional Seas Programme a place where long-time enemies could find a way to collaborate, proving that widely differing economies could work together without the rich nations dominating the poor. It showed the United Nations that scientific capacity-building could mean more than consultants from rich countries indulging in academic tourism to poor nations.

Stjepan Keckes recognized that environmental problems were also likely to be political, financial, or cultural, international and local rather than simply scientific, and gave all his energies to making those solutions work.

When Julia Marton-Lefèvre came to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Gland from the Costa Rica-based University for Peace (UPEACE) in 2007, she told me she believed water was a key issue where hostile communities could be brought to cooperate.

IUCN now has a Global Water Programme and a Swisssupported project designed to improve water cooperation across borders.

BRIDGE offers training packages and dialogue platforms for people from difference sectors, institutions and levels of government. It is currently working in 14 transboundary river basins across the world. Along with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), IUCN has trained some 2,000 people through an innovative multi-level approach, which Lin Ostrom considers to be the foundation for success in managing common water resources.

Since 1992 the Geneva-based United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has managed a Water Convention, which entered into force in 1996. It aims at codifying the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes. Since last year it has opened up beyond the UNECE region and today involves more than 110 countries.

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Gland, just up the lake from Geneva, is also the home of the Secretariat managing the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands that came into force in 1976. The current 2,281 designated Wetlands of International Importance cover 220 million hectares, 11 of which are in Switzerland.

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s wetlands are estimated to have disappeared since 1900. In 1997, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment valued wetlands services to society through waste treatment, storm protection and as a food source at 15 trillion US dollars. Such recognition has prompted organizations such as WWF-International and the Swiss Fund for Africa to step up their protection of wetlands through Ramsar.

Switzerland’s role in international water management

has been ratcheted up with the launch in mid-November 2015 of a Swiss-funded Global High-level Panel on Water and Peace in Geneva. It issued its report A Matter of Survival on 14 September 2017.

This points to the Indus and Lower Mekong of examples where “joint management of water resources can continue in times of armed conflict”. Joint management of the Senegal river has also continued despite occasional tensions between Senegal and Mauretania.

The International Red Cross has gained experience in Iraq and Syria on protecting urban water services during armed conflicts, the report adds. Finding reliable partners is key, it concludes, but says well-established networks and relationships as built up by the Red Cross could represent “a possible entry point” for securing water supplies.

One dispute over water will probably never be settled though. Lake Geneva will always be Lac Léman to the folk outside the Calvinist city.

Contributing editor Peter Hulm is a fan of bisses and has worked as an editorial consultant for IUCN, the WWF and UNECE. He has never been on a Swiss merchant ship, but he travels on Swiss lake steamers when he can.

This edition’s water articles were made possible in collaboration with Presence Suisse. Full editorial responsibility lies with Global Geneva magazine.

POETRY

Lausanne à Genève

By Uche Ogbuji Leaving Lausanne, leaving my shambled, quaint old Image, words as household foundations, words marked Meat and water, words on the cobblestones, I Fasten on matter,

Modern commerce, sprawl, the Olympics, my own Mission making sure of the train ride. Eyes right Scanning bâtiments in their stack on propped stack, Scaled to the hilltops,

More determination than eagerness, more Graft than craft. The magister mason Vaudois Roofs with hunchback dormers recede, remarbled, Chiseled by sunbeams,

Costume jewelled, snow-spittled for shine. Replacement Terroir shifts in, quiet as the lakeside mist strains Through the crust-cold, harbouring fallowed vineyards, Herringbone plated

Rows of packed snow tesselate plots of old growth Gothic, gold crowns flashing a come-on smile’s glossed Lips, with white fur mantle of Lac Léman cloud Framing the visage.

Looking everywhere for the culture’s warm front I survey from gallery zero, tagscape Splashed on pillar, factory wall and shelter, Balancing primness,

“Prière de faire” on placards indoors; yet even Smuggled breaths here cry out in calculation, Loveless: Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Like a stencil campaign, Street art by standard,

‘Til voila! ce truc chouette! A rasta head sprung, Faraway look, spangled with hearts in hair-tuftClipping pink, or tangle of brown, abstract legs Glowing forged passion.

Myrmidon arrays of punctilious cypress Gag the final curve at Genève and, gnome-clipped Solitaires, platane commun, winter suited, Business attired.

Lighting here where muchness has found its setting, Writing hard, I seek out the doers, their bright eyes.

There! Congealed and gemmed in this frost, the cold arts Cast in usura.

POET’S NOTES: “Tagscape” is a neologism for a wide swath of graffiti. “Tag” is a common slang term for one work of graffiti, so I fused that with “landscape.”

“Gallery zero” is along similar lines, a phrase coined from “ground zero” but taking the tagged-up landscape as the illicit gallery it is.

“Loveless: Bomb! Bomb!” -- where a bomb, in addition to the literal sense is also a graffiti culture term for a work that’s more about taking up space on the wall (e.g. in the US to mark gang territory) than a carefully considered artistic expression.

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COVER STORIES

Turning water drama into Geneva’s blue wave of peace If it had not done so before, the world truly learned about the power of water in 2017.

In late August, more than 1,200 people died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal in flooding that affected 40 million. In the Caribbean and southeastern seaboard of the United States, hurricanes Irma and Maria have been causing billions of dollars in damage as well as taking lives.

BY

Peter Kenny

WHEN SWITZERLAND’S FOREIGN MINISTER DIDIER BURKHALTER ANNOUNCED ON 14 SEPTEMBER, 2017, that “Water is a Swiss foreign policy priority,” he was not just delivering an off-the-cuff speech on his country’s commitment to a resource of which it knows it has plenty.

Flooding and drought-motivated tensions are affecting ultra-dry regions from Somalia to Mali as well as the disasters that have dominated most of the world headlines and television news spots in recent weeks.

Speaking at the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace in Geneva’s Maison de la Paix, a few hundred metres from the Palais des Nations, Burkhalter committed Switzerland to making Geneva the global water capital of peace. With international agreements on peace and water security as scarce as rivers and wells in the Sahel, his pledge served as a launching pad for the historic work of a special gathering of royalty, academics, international experts, diplomats and young water activists who have recognized the crucial importance of this vital planetary resource for human survival.

The so-called Blue Peace initiative for a global framework to promote water cooperation as an instrument

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for peace began in June 2010, when the leaders of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey met to launch a new era of cooperation in the Middle East. They also invited Iraq to join. In the second half of 2010, it appeared that elements of a future Middle East Union were being formed to operate in trade and transit, but also including water and environment. Success has ebbed and flowed since then, partly because of conflicts in the region.

Keynote speeches at the Maison de la Paix event also came from ICRC Vice-President Christine Beerli and Jordanian Prince El Hassan bin Talal, who is a prime motivator and champion of Blue Peace.

‘THE DRAMA OF WATER’ Speaking of “The Drama of Water,” the synopsis of the report says that some “two billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Most of them live in fragile, often violent regions of the world. In contemporary armed conflicts, water resources and installations are being increasingly attacked and used as weapons of war.”

The report highlights water scarcity, exacerbated in

a world with an expanding population facing human-induced climate change. But despite such problems, humanity must find out how to produce 50 percent more food and double its energy production by the middle of the 21st century. In the words of panel chairman and former Slovenian president, Dr Danilo Türk, the group believes that international water cooperation needs to be developed – and used – in a big way to strengthen international stability and peace, and conflict prevention.

“International Water Law – as developed in two UN conventions on international watercourses and lakes, and in a number of basin-specific agreements – offers a good platform for such a role,” he noted.

Somewhat unusually for such events, but important to highlight the contribution of culture, a special Symphony for Water and Peace, created by composers from different countries, was played at the close of the ceremony. As one participant pointed out, the event was held on a gloomy, rainy afternoon in autumnal Geneva, suggesting an abundance of water which so many other countries lack.

In South Africa’s Cape Town, for example, water was being rationed at the end of the 2017 winter wet season following a year packed with wild floods elsewhere on the planet. Months of water scarcity have raised tension between the local government in Cape Town and tens of thousands of people living in poor and informal settlements around this gem on Africa’s southern tip.

It prompted Helen Zille, the premier of Western Cape Province, to reveal that she only showers “briefly” every third day and that she regards “oily hair in a drought to be as much of a status symbol as a dusty car.”

“The link between the scarcity of water and conflict is well-documented,” said Burkhalter. “Water-related issues have contributed and exacerbated conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Water has even been turned into a weapon of war, be it through withholding it, contaminating it, or flooding. And competition for access to water is bound to grow, given the growing demand for water, urbanization, ongoing pollution, and climate change.”

WATER AND CLIMATE CHANGE An example of acute water shortage and the linkage to climate change lies in the dry conflict, is the Sahel, Africa’s transitional zone between the desert and the tropical south. Until late in the 20th century it was infused with baobab and acacia trees, and covered sparsely with grass.

Encroaching desertification is altering the landscape and overrunning precious agricultural and habitable land, a factor in recent regional conflicts.

Although water conflicts proliferate in different parts of the planet, they represent a key focus in the Middle East and North Africa. There are three major river basins in the region: the Jordan River Basin, the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin, and the Nile River Basin. It is a region covering some 11.1 million square kilometers with three main deserts, the biggest which is the Sahara stretching across a massive nine million square kilometres, comparable to the whole of China or the United States.

WATER ON THE SECURITY AGENDA Yet, Burkhalter said that despite the worrying development, “water is only gradually emerging on the international security agenda. Cooperation in this field has been limited so far.” He noted that while the risk of water turning into a major source of tension is real, “there is much potential to make water a key instrument for cooperation and a driver for peace.” Switzerland sees water being firmly established as a peace and security issue on the political agenda in the same way it has gained recognition as a development issue.

One panellist observed that, as the home of the Geneva Convention which sets out a legal framework for rules in the conduct of conflicts and wars, the city could also add its name to a convention relating to water and peace. The reasoning behind Switzerland’s initiation of the Global High-Level Panel is that it deems it essential to encourage a planet-wide discourse and framework on how to deal with the water crisis and turn water into a key tool of preventing conflict and sustaining peace.

BETTER WATER MANAGEMENT Burkhalter stressed the shared benefits of good and common water governance in watersheds crossing different national boundaries. “They include more trust, better access to water and other basic services (such as energy, agriculture and health), and generally better conditions for sustainable growth,” he said. “This is why Switzerland is committed to promoting transboundary water cooperation, strengthening hydro-diplomacy and pushing to do more to leverage water for peace.”

Burkhalter further singled out as important initiatives that Switzerland intends to push: facilitation, mediation, and hydro-diplomacy capacities for decreasing water-related tensions and preventing such conflicts. “The idea of an impartial clearing house for such activities – what the report calls a ‘Global Observatory for Water and Peace’ – deserves to be pursued further – and why not here in Geneva?”

South African journalist Peter Kenny covers UN, WTO and international issues from Geneva

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SWITZERLAND:

Mediating Blue Peace in the Middle East Widely regarded as Europe’s ‘water tower’, Switzerland has long emerged as an exemplary up-stream provider of quality water but also resource management to its neighbouring countries. This includes sometimes absorbing floods to avoid major disasters downstream.

Water is also a tool of Swiss diplomacy, particularly in the Middle East. Eileen Hofstetter, Deputy Head of the Global Programme Water at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), explains why.

BY Louisa Ballin SWITZERLAND’S ABUNDANCE OF WATER “is one reason why we consider it our responsibility to act and to provide expertise on water issues,” says Eileen Hofstetter, whose remit comes under the Swiss Foreign Ministry. By providing a neutral platform for such concerns, water can also serve as an instrument of peace, particularly for countries caught up in conflict. “People and countries can meet if they have a water problem and to solve it.

Moreover, it is a way to address other issues that they might have,” she adds.

Given its positive connotation as a natural resource required by all, no matter where in the world, water management has the advantage of taking relations a step further by fostering cooperation over the long-term. One example of good practice promoted by Switzerland is its Blue Peace Middle East Initiative, a process initially launched in 2011.

In terms of Swiss diplomacy but also development cooperation, this offers a potentially influential means of confidence-building and harmonization of water management for countries such as Iraq and Turkey.

Both share the Tigris, a 1,750-km river somewhat longer than the Rhine (1,230 km), which is itself technically overseen by up to six European counterparts, including Lichtenstein and Austria. “The Tigris is an important river for Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. But there is no accord, no contract on how to utilize the Tigris waters equitably and reasonably,” notes Hofstetter.

In recent years, Turkey, which commands the source of the Tigris, has unilaterally built numerous dams that make use of its waters along the 400 km within its own territory, primarily for agriculture, before the river flows into Iraq and then the Persian Gulf. Only 44 km of the Tigris passes through Syria.

“We have tried to bring Turkey and Iraq together to start a process that aims not only at confidence-building between the two countries but also to develop a joint monitoring mechanism,” reports Hofstetter. This produced a formal understanding between the two countries in 2014, which Switzerland is now building on in terms of concrete technical assistance following a request by the Iraqi water minister. It is now supporting Iraq in the building of monitoring stations along the Tigris, but

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has also identified, together with Ankara, a station on the Turkish side. “Our objective is eventually to exchange data on the Tigris waters between those two countries to lead to a common understanding of law patterns and management aspects of the Tigris water,” she explains.

As part of a second good practice, the water expert points out that the Middle East programme – despite ongoing political turmoil in the region – has now galvanized a community of 200 decision-makers composed of parliamentarians, former ministers, media representatives and researchers who regularly meet to discuss regional water issues. “They form an informal mechanism of dialogue, which does not exist in such a way in the Middle East,” Hofstetter notes. It includes players from Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, plus from both sides of Iraq, Kurdistan and Iraq’s Baghdad. “The ultimate aim is to create in the future a cooperative arrangement on the water resource.”

Hofstetter recognizes that although the current situation does not represent a convenient time for implementing such a project, Switzerland and its partners are working precisely along those lines. This despite much having changed since the process first began seven years ago. “It is a lot different now due to the crisis in Syria.

In the past, we had meetings in Amman, in Beirut, in Switzerland and we had study tours to the Rhine.” The SDC expert also recalls the extent with which water today is far less available because of the scars of war as well as pollution.

Hofstetter points out that water problems exist in most parts of the world, except perhaps in a few Nordic countries.

In the United States, for example, only one percent of water is processed by waste treatment plants. “This means that the overwhelming bulk of untreated water runs off into lakes and rivers. In turn, this can cause severe problems, or even water conflicts, because the clean water has to be allocated among different users and sectors.”

Contributing editor Luisa Ballin is a Swiss journalist based in Geneva.

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MPs bet on water diplomacy in the Middle East – and CERN Geneva’s Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is looking at Switzerland’s conciliatory waterdiplomacy style as a means for developing a new strategy aimed at dealing with tricky Middle Eastern issues.

by Louisa Ballin FOR THE GENEVA-BASED INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION, the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian question, has always remained a sensitive if not difficult concern. Now, however, Switzerland’s support of water diplomacy may offer a new direction for the 173-member global parliamentary organization. It could well enable IPU’s Middle East Committee to promotev a more collaborative rather than confrontational approach. “We should be moving away from the politically sensitive aspects of relations in the Middle East in order to look at issues that could be turned into factors of peaceful coexistence, such as water,” maintains Martin Chungong, the IPU’s Cameroonian Secretary General.

The IPU is exploring ways of dealing with potentially controversial issues that could be turned into opportunities for bringing about rapprochement among various communities in the Middle East. The world organization of parliaments recently held two roundtables “to look at issues that are relevant to the existence of the people, be they Israelis, Palestinians or other Arabs. We have identified a number of them, especially water. Because when you say ‘water’ you think immediately of scarcity or a country drawing water for itself, while the rest have none,” adds Chungong.

Members of Parliament in the Committee on Middle East Questions has been examining scientific solutions that could be used to increase the volume of water and to make it more available to everyone in the region. “This approach is shared by all, the Israelis, the Palestinians and other Arabs. Of course, you still have the political ramifications. But when it comes to the implementation of a project, we can say that scientific solutions exist.”

For instance, notes Chungong, the Israelis have positive track records of water management. The MPs are also looking at collaborative approaches implemented by other institutions, such as CERN (the European particle physics laboratory), which enables people of different political sensitivities to work together. While certain

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countries may be officially not talking to each other, their people and scientific experts are working together.

CERN is therefore a good model to use, he argues. “The Palestinians and Israelis may not agree politically, but when seeking scientific solutions to solve water issues they can work together. By building cooperation, you can help build trust.”

According to Chungong, both the Israelis and Palestinians have endorsed the new IPU approach. “Last April, when we had the IPU Assembly in Dacca, the situation in the region was very bad for the development in the Occupied Territories with the regularization of settlements,” he said. “The atmosphere was hardly conducive for anyone to talk. But when we put the proposal on the table for a second round on water, the MPs on all sides agreed to discuss together. They said that this is one of the few initiatives still alive when it comes to relations between Palestine and Israel.”

Together with members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), MPs from Ramallah, Jordan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain met with IPU Committee Chair, Denise Pascal Allende from Chile, as well as scientists from CERN. Experts from WaterLex, a Geneva-based organization promoting water cooperation, as well as the Geneva Water Hub headed up by former Slovenian president Danilo Türk were also present. The committee expects to report back to the IPU governing bodies in St Petersburg in October.

The IPU plans to create a network of parliamentary committees dealing with Middle Eastern water issues. It is also identifying projects that will be implemented with support from Waterlex and the Swiss. “We know the grievances of the Palestinians,” says Chungong, “but if we were to increase the volume of water it would take away part of those grievances.”

Contributing Global Geneva editor Luisa Ballin is a Swiss journalist based in Geneva.

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FROM THE FIELD

The Gerald Durrell Legacy:

MY CAREER AND OTHER ANIMALS For those brought up with the books of British naturalist, writer and film-maker, the late Gerald Durrell, it was with delight but also trepidation that many welcomed the new ITV series, The Durrells, now in its second year. Based on Durrell’s renowned book: My Family and Other Animals, some wondered whether the television rendition would hold up. So far, it has done so fairly well. Global Geneva contributor Keith Somerville explores the Durrell impact not just on his own life but also modern-day global conservation.

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THE STUDY OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR: A USEFUL ASSET FOR OBSERVING FERAL POLITICIANS? With this background, it was with a sense of nostalgia that when I was teaching in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent I used to pass the sign for the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE). When I was studying back in the mid-1970s I very nearly swapped from Politics and International Studies to Animal Psychology, which would have taken me down a different path to the one I chose in political journalism and academia – though the study of animal behaviour might well have proved just as useful when observing feral politicians.

But in September 2016 to my great delight I was invited to give a guest lecture at the Durrell Institute and in January this year was made a member of the Institute.

This was because my early Durrell and Attenboroughinstilled fascination with wildlife has never left me. In 36 years of making radio programmes in eastern and

southern Africa and writing books on conflict in Africa, I’ve always used programme-making or research trips to seek out and watch wildlife, and talk to those most closely involved in its conservation and study.

Leptodactylus fallax aka. Mountain Chicken

CHILDREN HATE GOING TO BED. They always want to stay up for just another few minutes, and a few more. But on dark winter nights in wet, cold, gloomy Acton in the early 1960s, there was nothing I wanted to do more than get to bed and have one of my parents read to me from Gerald Durrell’s books of his adventures with animals, his collecting expeditions to West Africa and South America and the story of the formation of his zoo in Jersey which I’d visited as a five-year old.

With Durrell, as with David Attenborough and other naturalists or zoo keepers like Graham Dangerfield and Desmond Morris, I could put a face and a powerful presence to the words because of their television programmes. Just as I drank in the words read out from his books, I was an avid consumer of their programmes on natural history. They were huge influences on my early years and I developed a love of and fascination with animals.

They nurtured a desire not just to see animals in zoos – and I was a zoo lover, however questionable that may appear today when ideas about zoos have changed dramatically – but to go to Africa or Guyana or even just the New Forest in England to see animals in the wild.

Their programmes, along with Anglia TV’s Survival, introduced me to the magical Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, and it was camping down in the Crater in 1986 that my pregnant wife and I felt the first kicks from my son Tom. Six years later, as I prepared to go on a programmemaking trip to Guyana for the BBC World Service, I recorded chapters from Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and The Bafut Beagles for Tom to listen to before going to bed. He, too, loved books and stories and particularly Durrell’s and my funny attempts to do some of the voices.

As head of World Service news and current affairs documentaries in 1993, I sent myself off to Botswana to look at the country’s conservation policies and the perennial, controversial question of whether or not to trade in ivory; whether such a trade helped conserve or conversely encouraged the poaching of elephants.

The ivory issue became a major interest and over more than two decades I assiduously collected material, kept interview transcripts and recordings, and researched the issues, leading to the publication in November 2016 of my book, Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa. It was this book and series of shorter pieces on both the ivory and the rhino horn debates that led to me being made a member of DICE – something of which I am inordinately pleased and proud, not just because of the international reputation and scholarship of the Institute but because of the connection with one of the towering figures of conservation and the popularisation of wildlife issues in the last half of the 20th century.

Gerald Durrell was a big presence in every sense of the word. He tirelessly promoted the cause of species and habitat conservation. But not for him the sexy, obvious, charismatic megafauna, but instead less well-known creatures that few who didn’t live beside them or study them were aware of, but which are each equally fascinating and valuable in ecological terms. His books entranced readers across the world – as they had me and my son – and his TV programmes on wildlife and the dramatisations of the chaotic, colourful but charismatic accounts of the Durrell family fauna and their Grecian habitat have entertained millions of viewers.

Lee Durrell, the distinguished conservationist, Honorary Director Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Gerald Durrell’s widow, told me his legacy was multi-dimensional. Through his writing, which she

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FORM THE FIELD | THE GERALD DURELL LEGACY: MY CAREER AND OTHER ANIMALS

believed helped people appreciate “the fundamental connection between people and animals” and encouraged his readers to “re-connect with wildlife and nature”, his founding in 1959 of his zoo which has become a wildlife conservation trust and, as Lee Durrell put it, the creation there of a “mini-university” for training people from across the world – 4,100 individuals from 137 countries have participated in Durrell courses and workshops on conservation and wildlife research.

The BBC’s towering founding Director-General, Lord Reith, once characterised the mission of the corporation as being to inform, educate and entertain. Gerald Durrell could be said to have been a one-man conservation corporation who informed, educated and entertained but then did a lot more. He was instrumental in saving endangered species and he worked to change zoos into tools for conservation, scientific research and education, so they were not just collections of cramped cages full of sad animals.

ZOOS: BREEDING CENTRES FOR ENDANGERED SPECIES Lee Durrell says he saw zoos as having a far more important task even than education, that they had far more roles to play – as breeding centres for critically endangered species, as training centres for conservationists and as scientific research institutions. Durrell, she said, believed strongly that zoos should have the active conservation role he developed at Jersey Zoo (now the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust), and should have a strong scientific research component so that animals in captivity could be studied in ways it was often impossible to study them in the field and that this research was vital to get the information necessary to ensure they survived in the wild.

Gerald Durrell as a boy on the Greek island of Corfu. [GERALD DURRELL FAMILY ARCHIVES]

Gerald Durrell, Lee Durrell and the Trust have played important roles in breeding and reintroducing into the wild species like the Assamese pygmy hog (85 of which have been successfully bred and released back into the wild), the mountain chicken frog of the eastern Caribbean, the Madagascar pochard, and the Round island boa, to name but a few. The Trust works across the world with local organisations and communities to further the cause of conservation, importantly, to involve and empower local people.

CRITICISM OF ZOOS AND THEIR METHODS When, in the 1980s, there was mounting criticism of zoos and their methods, while Durrell felt that many zoos were appalling and should be closed down, he was distressed by the broad-brush attacks on all zoos and the

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lack of recognition of the role that good zoos could play.

Groups like Zoo Check, founded by the actress Virginia McKenna of Born Free fame, was vigorous in its anti-zoo campaigning, though it is noticeable that Jersey Zoo was never singled out for criticism by Zoo Check or its successor the Born Free Foundation. Lee Durrell told me that while the zoos that kept animals in terrible conditions should be closed, there should also be recognition of the major contributions of zoos that had a positive impact through the sort of work that her husband had pioneered.

Another area of controversy that his wife believes hurt Durrell was criticism of his representation of Africans, notably the Fon of Bafut (one of the larger than life characters in The Bafut Beagles). Durrell’s biographer, Douglas Botting (see note below), wrote that Durrell was upset by the British government officials in Cameroon suggesting that he had presented the Fon as a “black clown” and in ways that would, in modern jargon, be called politically incorrect. You can still see on various websites, including Wikipedia, criticism of him as a closet colonialist or even racist.

UNFAIR – AND SILLY – ATTACKS AGAINST DURRELL Both Botting and Lee Durrell think these accusations don’t bear close scrutiny as not only did the Fon himself have no problem with his depiction (far from it according to Botting) but Durrell’s whole history of work with peoples

across the globe and the internationalist nature of his work speak against this. As a journalist who has spent most of his career concerned with and reporting on Africa, I find the criticisms both silly but also ahistorical as much of the language criticised is language that he used to lampoon himself, his family and friends but it was also very much the language of its time and of his peers.

From reading his books, his biography and, most importantly, having had the chance to talk at length about him with his wife, Gerald Durrell comes across as a complex and multi-faceted man who was of his time but moved ahead of his time in his approach to zoos, conservation and man’s link with the animal world – not to mention his value as a writer on wildlife and story-teller. For these reasons and because of the pleasure his books gave me and my family, my connection with Durrell through DICE is something to be proud of and to live up to.

Professor Keith Somerville is a member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, teaches journalism at the Centre for Journalism there and is author of Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa and Africa’s Long Road Since Independence.

He is now working on a history of human-lion coexistence and conflict from early man to the present. Previous articles by Keith Somerville in Global Geneva include: Is legal trade the only way to save Africa’s remaining rhinos and Keeping it in the family: How Africa’s corrupt leaders remain in power.

FROM THE FIELD

Saying Goodbye to Afghanistan’s Ghosts and Dreams The ongoing conflict in Afghanistan dates back to the summer of 1978 when anticommunist rebels first rose up against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. Since then, the fighting has slogged through different stages ranging from civil war to foreign occupation, back to civil war and occupation again. Ever since the US-led invasion in October, 2001, Afghanistan has been regarded as America’s longest war. Under the Trump administration’s new strategy, the U.S. is stepping up its commitment to over 15,000 troops promising a long-haul approach to a conflict unlikely to be resolved by military means.

American journalist Jean MacKenzie looks back at more than decade of life covering this seemingly never-ending disaster – and wondering whether it was all worth it.

SITTING ON THE SUN-DRENCHED PATIO OF LE BISTRO, in the heart of Kabul eating freshly baked croissants, it is hard to think of leaving Afghanistan. This is a country where I have lived for more than a decade, where I have found satisfying work, forged rewarding friendships, learned a new language. I have absorbed this complicated, tragic, maddening, ceaselessly fascinating country into my bones.

Le Bistro is a favorite haunt; in the old days – circa 2005 — it was devilish to get a table on a Friday morning, as the international community poured in bleary-eyed after a night’s revelry, ordering double espressos, swapping tales of mayhem and reading what passed for the society rag, a monthly called Afghan Scene.

Fridays are much quieter now; there are not many foreigners who are allowed out of their isolated enclaves, and few Afghans can afford the steep Western prices for the European cuisine. Le Bistro is one of the few international bubbles left in the city. Some have closed due to lack of custom, while others have been shut down by more harrowing means. A popular Lebanese restaurant, La Taverna, was attacked in January 2014, killing 21. The owner, Kamal Hamde, a much-loved figure in Kabul, was among the dead. Things were never quite the same after

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that. (Under Washington’s new ‘Green Zone’ approach, however, a new two-year-long public works’ project will transform much of Kabul’s centre with most of its embassies, hotels and office buildings into a Baghdad-style ‘protected’ area allowing greater – and, supposedly, safer – freedom of movement).

GHOSTS, DREAMS AND REGRETS FOR WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN But that is life in Kabul, where we live with the ghosts, the dreams, and the regrets for what might have been.

I first came to Kabul in 2004, a time of euphoria over the nation’s first-ever democratic presidential elections, when Afghans were basking in the attention – and money – being showered on them by the rest of the world. They had just emerged from the Taliban’s dark embrace, and everything seemed possible. Anyone with a few words of English could be hired as a translator for the hordes of aid workers and journalists flowing into the country; guards, drivers, cleaners and cooks were in high demand, and no able-bodied man or woman who wanted to work was jobless for long. Even fully-qualified medical doctors abandoned their professions for positions as far

French army helicopters with the NATO force landing in Kabul. [PHOTO: EDWARD GIRARDET]

higher paid translators for the UN, EU, World Bank or NATO, earning 4-5 times more than an ordinary USD 200 per month salary with the new government, ironically completely undermining the public health sector.

The Office of Transition Initiatives at the US Embassy was handing out millions of dollars, often in cash and with little oversight. I worked with Afghan journalists in an organization helping to set up the nation’s first news agency. It was tremendously exciting to see it all taking shape, to feel a part of this great new adventure, while remaining blissfully unaware of the many dark undercurrents: the ethnic and regional rivalries, the harassment of women, the inevitable skimming of resources, from cash to fuel to paper.

MORE THAN A DECADE OF DISAPPOINTMENT, MISSTEPS AND BETRAYALS The city was still tattered and bleeding from decades of war. Many streets were unpaved. There were few trees, and the air was thick with smoke from millions of wood fires, the only heat available. We had electricity just four hours every third night, which meant hot showers were a luxury, and no food requiring refrigeration could be kept in the house. We lived on adrenaline, on determination, on the sheer exotica that was Afghanistan. Girls masquerading as boys? Boys dancing like women? Six-year-old brides? It all made for good copy, but surely these were leftover effluvia from the old Afghanistan. The Taliban were gone and we were here, so within a few years, it seemed, Afghanistan would be remade, preferably in our own image and likeness.

How naïve all of that seems now, after more than a decade of disappointment, of missteps and betrayals.

The litany of failure is all too familiar. The Taliban now control more territory than at any time since 2001,

the opium poppy industry is booming, and even our most widely-touted achievement, the number of children in school, is now under a cloud, with the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction finding “extreme discrepancies” between the reported statistics and actual numbers of students and teachers on the ground. The same thing happened during the 1980s when USAID was supposedly supporting hundreds of schools inside guerrilla-held Afghanistan. Many supposed ‘schools’ were never even built or stood there empty for lack of teachers. There was no money to pay salaries.

STALEMATE OR FAILURE? General John Nicholson, the top commander of international troops in Afghanistan, calls it a “stalemate,” but when a coalition of 42 of the world’s most advanced countries cannot defeat a collection of ragtag insurgents, it feels a lot more like failure.

This is not really surprising; this war has never really made a lot of sense. The US-led invasion of 2001 was an act of blind rage in the aftermath of 9/11, a meting out of punishment to a convenient target. Afghanistan had few powerful backers, Osama Bin Laden was being sheltered by the Afghan government, and nobody particularly liked the Taliban. It mattered little that the Taliban had had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, or that they were feverishly searching for a face-saving way of getting rid of their unwelcome guest.

AMERICA NEEDED A WAR, AND IT GOT ONE. Within weeks the Taliban were toppled and Bin Laden had scarpered over the Hindu Kush into Pakistan, a country of nearly 195 million people, and armed with

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FROM THE FIELD | SAYING GOODBYE TO AFGHANISTAN’S GHOSTS AND DREAMS

Nancy Hatch Dupree: A loss for Afghanistan and the world AMERICAN AFGHANISTAN HISTORIAN, WRITER AND VISIONARY NANCY DUPREE, died in Kabul on 10 September, 2017 at the age of 89. First arriving in Afghanistan in 1962, she became one of the country’s most ardent and outspoken advocates for the preservation of its culture and history. According to the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU), which she helped found, she spent 55 years ensuring that Afghanistan be recognized and remembered for its rich art, language and story-telling traditions.

For those who knew her, whether Afghan or expatriate, she was renowned for her dedicated and passionate ongoing struggle to save Afghanistan’s cultural heritage despite nearly 40 years of war, occupation, destruction and repression, particularly during the Taliban period. This includes the ACKU collection of over 150,000 materials ranging from newspapers and periodicals to rare mujahed publications as well as cultural heritage and women’s rights documents. ACKU is widely regarded as one of the world’s richest and most comprehensive sources of information about Afghanistan. Nancy’s vision also ensured that easy-to-read books be made available through the centre’s ABLE box library to local communities throughout the country. During her final days, she helped organize, catalogue and upload nearly 14,000 historical images for ACKU’s website.

Given the thousands of Afghans, international aid workers, journalists, diplomats and academics who knew and admired Nancy Dupree, whether during her Peshawar days or in Kabul, Global Geneva will be publishing a special memorial article in the Dec. 2017/ Jan. 2018 edition. For those who wish to contribute anecdotes, observations, plus photographs, please contact Edward Girardet at: editor@global-geneva.com The Editors

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Afghanistan’s protector of culture and history: American visionary, Nancy Dupree.

nuclear weapons. As the Taliban regrouped in Quetta, with, at the very least, Islamabad’s benign neglect, we turned our attention to nation-building in Kabul.

AFGHANS LOSING HOPE – BUT THERE ARE ALSO TRIUMPHS What a nation we built! Afghanistan regularly ranks in the bottom two or three on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and Afghans are losing hope that the problem can be fixed. If anything, corruption seems to be worsening as the threat of an international pullout looms on the horizon. “People are now in survival mode,” said a psychologist from Kabul University. “They have just two thoughts: grab whatever they can and get the hell out.”

Hundreds of thousands are doing just that: Afghans make up the second largest group of refugees in European centers. But there have been triumphs, too. In my own case, I am proudest of a small project I implemented in Helmand Province, training local journalists. I took a group of high school students and turned them into reporters — indefatigable, courageous, dedicated. Every triumph, though, is tinged with tragedy. Large swaths of Helmand Province have now fallen to the Taliban, and I wait in dread to hear that one of my trainees has been killed in the fighting.

I have met many impressive men and women who would have had very different lives without the international intervention. They go abroad on Fulbrights or Chevenings, come back with degrees from prestigious institutions and prepare to put their skills to use in the

Western aid workers in Helmand Province heading for NATO helicopter. [PHOTO: EDWARD GIRARDET]

service of their country. Students I knew a decade ago are now ambassadors, deputy ministers, heads of businesses.

These “Millennials” are clearly the nation’s best hope, if they manage to clean up the system before it sucks them in.

It is a big “if.” As one young man – himself educated in a US university – told me: “You can dress in clean white clothes, but once you go up the chimney you come out black.”

The question is: was it all worth the blood and money?

The issue is not whether our presence here has done any good – of course it has. The real question is whether our achievements are at all commensurate with the expenditure of blood and treasure. Thousands of lives and hundreds of billions have been squandered – and for what, exactly? We told ourselves we were fighting terrorism, even though the Taliban have never been included in the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

We told ourselves we were building democracy, even as we enabled one of the most corrupt governments on earth.

We poured billions into assistance programs that were designed and executed by a small army of highly-paid consultants who never left their heavily-guarded compounds. These are the conversations that many assistance workers are now having in Afghanistan, behind closed doors, after a few drinks on a weekend evening.

During the day everyone is busily engaged in touting successes, organizing meetings, writing reports that no one reads, conducting workshops for Afghans who show up just for the lunch and the per diem.

It could make a cynic out of even the most committed Pollyanna. Much of what we have managed to accomplish

may well disappear shortly after we withdraw. The Afghan government still relies on international largesse for 70 percent of its operating budget, and if the money goes, the state may well follow.

HAVE WE FAILED BECAUSE WE NEVER UNDERSTOOD AFGHANISTAN? And yet it is hard to argue that Afghanistan would have been better off without us. On a recent Thursday evening, I drove through the crowded downtown area near my house, and felt the buzz of life in the city. Shops and stalls were strung with colored lights, balloon sellers roamed the crowds, and delectable smells of kebab and roast chicken filled the air. Families were out with their children, buying shir yakh, a type of Afghan ice cream, or crowding into the Barg Continental for a family meal. It is a far cry from those early days, when the city plunged into darkness and gloom as the sun went down.

Is it enough to justify what we have all been through?

I no longer know. I cannot escape the feeling that we have failed – not because we were incompetent, or corrupt, or ill-intentioned, but because we never really understood what we were trying to accomplish. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there, said the Cheshire Cat to Alice.

For me, the time has finally come to leave Wonderland. With love and tears, I am taking the road out of Afghanistan.

Jean MacKenzie has worked in Afghanistan both as a media trainer and a journalist since 2004.

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GLOBAL GENEVANS

INGER ANDERSEN:

‘No one can go at it alone on sustainable development’ At a time when critical issues such as climate change, wars, refugee and migration waves, neglected tropical diseases, human rights abuses and non-sustainable land and water use are affecting all aspects of our planet, people can no longer pick and choose which problems to tackle. As Inger Andersen, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), points out, environmental concerns must be part of our overall view, as with every one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

BY

Edward Girardet

“NATURE CONSERVATION USED TO BE CONSIDERED – perhaps – a stand-alone issue, but today we can simply no longer think this way,” Inger Andersen told me. Her glass and steel office, on the outskirts of Gland along the lake road from Geneva to Lausanne, matches her conviction. It is deliberately designed as an environmentally sensitive and energy-efficient model structure.

The IUCN HQ includes its own wild garden and pond with local species chosen for their importance to the Vaud ecosystem, bringing a welcome touch of nature to the apartment blocks around. It also offers eco-friendly meeting facilities for local businesses.

“Time is running out,” she warned. “Protecting nature is not in competition with any of the SDGs. They all have

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to be dealt with together and globally on a country-bycountry basis. No one can afford to go it alone.”

The Danish Director-General, who in January 2015 assumed the reins of the world’s largest grouping of conservationists, also sees IUCN as very much part of the International Geneva – or Switzerland – community.

Responsible for harnessing the know-how and resources of over 1,300 member organizations including NGOs, government and UN agencies, scientific institutions, indigenous peoples and business associations, Andersen stressed the importance of tapping the expertise of some 10,000 experts world-wide. She herself is a water, drought and desertification specialist (See Water and Peace, Made in Switzerland).

INCORPORATING CONSERVATION IN GLOBAL APPROACHES IUCN has six different commissions focusing on themes such as species survival, environmental law, social and economic policy, education and communication. Its members and officials regularly take part in national, regional and international meetings and discussions dealing with subjects ranging from cultural heritage to sustainable water.

Andersen further pointed out that “it is absolutely vital to take stock of what nature has to offer.” This means recognizing the importance of natural resources and using them carefully in a manner that will safeguard the world’s future. “While this is what IUCN does best, valuing and conserving nature can also benefit all that the SDGs stand for: tackling climate change, reducing poverty, improving food security and health..., access to health…And even why people are seeking to migrate from countries where they feel they have no future. The list is long.”

overall equation. Oceans, forests, soil…”

Healthy soil, for example, mitigates climate, makes food production more resilient and reduces the risk of drought and flood. The restitution of forests, or putting them back into ‘working order’, impacts agriculture, water resources and the way we live. Forest landscape restoration not only reduces carbon releases. It also provides jobs and increases biodiversity. The Bonn Challenge launched by IUCN and Germany in 2011, aims to restore 350 million ha of forests by 2030 with worldwide projects ranging from Southern Europe to Africa and Southeast Asia. Most of these landscapes are currently degraded but are being

FROM RENOWNED ORNITHOLOGISTS AND THE SWEARING PRINCE TO SOCIETY-FOCUSED SCIENCE IUCN, which was established in 1948 in Fontainebleau, France, with headquarters in Brussels, has come a long way in close to 70 years. In the 1960s and 70s it operated little more than a modest secretariat based in a 1920s villa in Morges further up the lake. Even then the organization had regular visits from leading conservationists from around the world such as Peter Scott, Niko Tinbergen, Armand Denis, Gerald Durrell (See article in this issue by Keith Somerville), Luc Hoffmann, Peter Jackson and George Schaller. They would hold chats over tea for the 30-odd staff in the villa’s living room or in the garden. Even Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, could be heard swearing good-humouredly if not vividly in the front reception area during one of his visits.

Faced with steady expansion – by 1978 IUCN was running 137 projects largely in Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world – it moved to Gland together with the international office of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund/Worldwide Fund for Nature) in 1981. To the chagrin of many in Morges – the town council failed to grasp the importance of conservation as a growing global concern – Gland was willing to offer an attractive deal. IUCN now has a world-wide staff of almost 1,000 people working in some 50 different countries, helping to put the Lake Geneva town on the international conservation map.

NATURE IS PART OF THE OVERALL EQUATION For Andersen, who deliberately travels from her home in Geneva by public transport, climate change is a particularly crucial issue. And not just because it has become an ‘in’ concern for all outside Trumpland. “We’ve always been dealing with climate change, even if not intentionally at first, because nature is very much part of the

gradually brought back to use, taking the pressure off pristine areas.

THE EARTH IS LOSING SPECIES ON AVERAGE 1,000 TIMES THE NATURAL EXTINCTION RATE “We’re working on ensuring nature’s viability, because if we don’t do this, there is no future for our planet. It’s important to understand that everything is interlinked nature and healthy ecosystems can help to adapt and respond to today’s challenges,” Andersen said. Given the current deterioration of biodiversity, the planet is – on average – losing species at 1,000 times the natural extinction rate, a veritable slippery slope. “To halt this hurtling decline, we must look at conservation in the broader context of human welfare,” she added.

Ecosystem collapse and loss of its services are often the first step toward societal breakdown, Andersen, a Britisheducated economic development specialist, notes. For this reason, ensuring viable ecosystems, including combatting the extinction of species are critical for our self-preservation. The IUCN Red List with its 86,000 assessments of species, for example, spells out to what degree they are threatened around the world, plus what is driving them to extinction. “The Red List is like a barometer of life,” she said. “And its diagnoses are necessary for any discussion on how to tackle the current extinction crisis.”

Andersen sees a number of factors as imperative for achieving sustainable development. One is for IUCN to invest in its members. “All of them represent naturebased solutions that we need to make use of,” she stressed.

“It’s extremely important to understand the dynamics of

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GLOBAL GENEVANS | IUCN: ‘NO ONE CAN GO AT IT ALONE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT’

POETRY

Our Lot

BY DEBORAH BACHARACH Can you feel the lid screw into the threads?

Cloisonné turns once, twice, locked.

You aren’t dead yet. The thing with the hip just a displacement, not the end.

There will be an end; this coalescence of atoms will dissipate like a song from David’s harp, a car chase through Grendel’s cave where the faces barely shake.

Lot tied a string to the table leg.

It unwound past where he refused to stay. Out of the caves, it wandered the lineage with him.

We eat the tangled grasses of the dead.

We wear the searching flowers of the dead.

We smoke long pipes with the dead.

We make claims for the dead, follow the thread.

Equipoise

BY DEBORAH BACHARACH Maybe at the start of the war, in a tea shop, where two women with long strands of pearls take white cubes of sugar in silver tongs.

Maybe when they send ocean-soft letters.

Or at the outdoor Barcelona café where I fill my mouth with olives, and the infant sleeps on my chest, her heartbeat a sun.

One candlelit Boston night, there’s sweet calamari shared with mathematicians, who turn toward the greater good like the Burghers of Calais, all of them: effervescent.

At home, Ms. Stein brings me cherries dipped in chocolate. She names them honesty and eloquence.

Deborah Bacharach is the author of After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). Her work has appeared in Arts & Letters, New Letters, Poet Lore, and Ilanot. She has degrees from Swarthmore College and the University of Minnesota and teaches at Seattle Pacific University. Find out more about her at DeborahBacharach.com.

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nature, so one of our roles is to engage with science. This in turn helps us invest more knowledgeably in nature conservation.” Like forests, healthy oceans can absorb carbon, but they also serve other purposes. However, to cultivate healthy oceans, we must also re-build mangrove forests along coastal areas, given that they not only serve as protective breeding grounds for fish and other marine species, but can protect against hurricanes and water surges, such as tsunamis.

GOOD JOURNALISM AND EDUCATION ARE KEY Another critical factor is effective stimulation to action.

From IUCN’s point of view, it is clear what is possible to achieve through nature conservation. As Andersen argued, it’s all about convincing people of what is needed, and why. For example, one can explain that restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land can sequester the equivalent to the average yearly CO2 emissions of over 350 million cars in the U.S. Or that more productive soils can boost security for millions around the world. “But you still have to ensure that people understand,” she said. “So it’s all about stories which put across the message of how and why we should invest in nature in order to restore our planet. I consider good journalism a highly important partner in this approach. Good journalism needs to inspire people through stories that show what is happening. And only then can we really start speaking about a fairer and more sustainable world.”

Part of this approach, particularly now that donor governments are cutting back on financial support, is to work with businesses. “We don’t see ourselves as competing with other organizations, such as UNHCR or UNICEF, but as part of the global effort to find solutions and to take action. It is also clear that we need to get industry, the private sector, on board, and not just for funding,” Andersen explained. Businesses across sectors to embrace more sustainable practises, through specific guidelines that will enable them to run their businesses profitably while minimizing their impact on biodiversity.

At the same time, IUCN welcomes the involvement of companies such as Toyota, which last year expanded its support for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species for the additional collection of data of 28,000 species, including many that represent key food sources for much of the world’s population.

Equally vital for both education and the media, Andersen believes, is getting young people involved. This means getting into schools, an approach that IUCN seeks to support. “If we don’t get young people on board, we won’t succeed in achieving a sustainable future. Luckily, a lot of young people I meet understand this and recognize that it is their future at stake. It is important to continue working in this direction.”

Edward Girardet is editor of Global Geneva magazine. During the late 1960s and 70s, his businessman father worked as an unpaid volunteer and financial executive for IUCN in Morges. As a foreign correspondent, the son has always sought to incorporate conservation and environment concerns in his coverage of wars and humanitarian crises around the world.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

Swiss banks & money laundering in the shadows of Latin American democracy On June 20, 2015, Swiss regulators were suddenly flooded by dozens of confidential alerts from the country’s major banks. The alerts focused on money laundering, bribes and other crimes related to secret accounts linked to Latin America. In Bern, authorities had to decide immediately whether to ask the Swiss Attorney General not only to freeze these accounts, but open criminal procedures.

BY

Jamil Chade

IN JUNE 2015, MARCELO ODEBRECHT, THE CEO OF NORBERTO ODEBRECHT and the man in command of one of the world’s largest construction companies, was arrested in Brazil. The next day more than 60 fraud alerts were issued and dozens of Swiss banks filed urgent reports. By law, Swiss banks are obliged to disclose any wrongdoing by their clients, and even suspicious transfers of money.

With a major Latin American player facing disgrace, no institution wanted to be seen as being complicit. More important, they wanted to avoid the perception that they had accepted questionable money and turned a blind eye to massive corruption for decades.

Both Swiss and Brazilian investigators claimed that Odebrecht had created a comprehensive system, designed to organize the payment of bribes. This was also allegedly coupled with the illegal financing of Latin American political systems. The funds were reportedly moved through secret bank accounts in Geneva, Zurich and Lugano.

Altogether, Swiss authorities blocked more than one thousand accounts related to “Car Wash Operations” in Brazil with ripple effects throughout the continent. (The scandal is known as car wash because of its similarity to the way in which such businesses in Brazil can be used to launder criminal money). Forty-two Alpine banks were involved and $1.1 billion were frozen. That was more than the confiscations during the Arab Spring from the combined fortunes of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gaddafi.

ILLEGALLY FINANCING LATIN AMERICA’S DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM Almost immediately, Latin American countries began desperately attempting to repatriate lost funds to their own struggling national accounts. While investigators sought to track down the money trail, the attorneys-general explored how purportedly democratic systems were being financed through offshore companies and secret accounts using sophisticated computer systems to hide the payments by issuing thousands of fake receipts and contracts.

If Brazil’s political drama took centre stage by investigating and indicting more than 200 suspects, it was by no means the only scene of financial skullduggery. Odebrecht had secretly financed presidential campaigns in nine other countries and spent more than $788 million to buy influence throughout Latin America. In many cases, the money was not intended to not only enrich politicians, but also to purchase votes and publicity as well as to pay for communications strategies and support. Odebrecht had become involved in virtually every aspect of Latin America’s modern democratic political campaigns.

In exchange for financing distorted electoral processes, Odebrecht and other companies were rewarded with more than one hundred public contracts issued by the same people these companies had helped into power.

Ironically, the return on their initial investments was guaranteed with the money of those same tax payers who actally voted for the corrupt candidates.

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA | SWISS BANKS & MONEY LAUNDERING IN THE SHADOWS OF LATIN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

A ONE-IN-FOUR DOLLAR RETURN And the deal was worth it. Documents obtained by Americas Quarterly, the official journal of the American Studies Assocation, from the Attorney-General’s Office of Switzerland, claim that for every dollar spent on bribing politicians, Odebrecht secured a return of four dollars in contracts. Switzerland is now actively cooperating with authorities in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Panama, as well as providing information to the U.S. Department of Justice relating to other investigations in Venezuela.

Stateside, the indictment procedure at the Department of Justice in Washington points to a similar pattern.

“Between 2001 and 2016, Odebrecht allegedly conspired to make hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to foreign officials, foreign political parties and foreign political candidates to secure an improper advantage and to influence them in order to obtain and retain business in various countries around the world,” it claims.

Some observers say that the investigation in Switzerland raises numerous questions about the consolidation of democracy in Latin America. In Peru, for example, authorities requested judicial cooperation from Bern in light of the suspicion that $29 million were used illegally to assure the different campaigns of presidents Alejandro Toledo, Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala. “Odebrecht realized benefits of more than $143 million as a result of these corrupt payments,” maintain US authorities.

FUNDING PRESIDENTS WITH ILLEGAL MONEY

In January, 2017, Ecuador sent a mission to Bern to request the cooperation of attorney-general Michael Lauber regarding accounts used by Odebrecht to bribe local officials. The Swiss authorities have now identified payments to relatives of former president Ricardo Martinelli and bribes of up to $59 million. In the Dominican Republic, president Danilo Medina is also facing questions about alleged payments, while Colombia investigates possible illegal money infusions into the presidential campaign of President Juan Manuel Santos.

In December last year, as part of a plea agreement, Odebrecht admitted to having committed criminal acts.

He agreed to pay more than $3 billion in fines to the U.S., Swiss and Brazilian authorities. Despite this settlement, the case is far from closed. While the political tsunami unfolds, there are still concerns as to how such a complex financial scheme was possible, especially in light of the latest controls established by Swiss banks to avoid money laundering and corruption in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

Various U.S. documents report that “transactions were layered through multiple levels of offshore entities and bank accounts throughout the world, often transferring the illicit funds through up to four levels of offshore bank accounts before reaching the final recipient”. Investigators note that, by doing this, “members of the conspiracy sought to distance the origin of the funds from the final beneficiaries.”

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A HIGHLY PROFESSIONAL MONEY LAUNDERING OPERATION The Swiss authorities claim Odebrecht’s operations were carried out with a “high degree of professionalism” that involved hiding a computer server in Geneva to register unrecorded funds and payments by the company to Latin American politicians. A “Division of Structured Operations” was created to organize the massive payments of bribes as part of a totally secure and secret internet communication channel, they say. The crisis obliged the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the government’s oversight body for financial regulation, to open investigations against 25 financial institutions regarding their role in the Car Wash Operations. Most of them have been cleared, with only three banks obliged to undergo significant scrutiny. Their cases are still pending and the agency admits that, two years on, it still has no idea when a decision will be taken, if ever.

Operators of this allegedly large-scale industrial approach to bribery, tell a different story. They claim that at least some of the Swiss banks were fully aware of the scheme, but never questioned it. In one plea bargain agreement, the former director of Petrobras, Pedro Paulo Barusco, confessed that he possessed more than ten Swiss accounts with different banks worth $61 million.

DID THEY, OR DIDN’T THEY KNOW: WHO’S TO BLAME?

According to investigators, former Odebrecht executive Fernando Miggliaccio has identified PKB in Lugano as one of the banks used by the company. One of the account managers supposedly had access to the clandestine internet server set up by the construction company and would exchange messages updating transfers and payments done on behalf of Odebrecht. According to Miggliaccio, the construction giant was never directly linked to the secret accounts at PKB, despite the knowledge of the manager-in-charge. PKB charged a 1.5 percent tax for each of the transfers. And the operator inside the bank responsible for administering the assets kept part of this fee for himself. For its part, PKB claims that it has taken adequate measures against the rogue manager. It also maintains that it was the first to alert authorities on Odebrecht’s suspicious transactions.

In other banks, managers allegedly knew that the secret accounts registered under the names of offshore companies were in reality operated by Odebrecht. When the sand castle collapsed, Miggliaccio said that these banks had marked the name of the construction company by hand on internal documents relating to the accounts in to avoid facing questions by regulators.

Laptops confiscated in Brazil also show how Marcelo Odebrecht held meetings with his Swiss account managers.

While searching for data on one of Odebrecht’s mobiles, the police discovered that Patrick Valiton, a Geneva-based bank manager, had had regular contact with the Brazilian businessman since 2010. One of these meetings was held on 24 March, 2014, seven days after the Car Wash operations exploded in Brazil.

JUSTIFYING FUNDS BEYOND THE HOTEL BEAU RIVAGE

SWISS BANKS CRACKING DOWN, BUT HOW SERIOUSLY?

On 14 November, 2014, Odebrecht registered a message on his phone with clear information. “Lunch with Patrick Valiton. Place Hotel Beau Rivage”, referring to the Geneva luxury hotel that overlooks the lake. Miggliaccio mentioned Valiton in his plea bargain agreement as someone “close to the family (Odebrecht).” According to the documents, the former Brazilian executive says that the name of the construction enterprise was never mentioned in the accounts maintained by the bank.

Instead, offshore companies were created solely to handle the funds. It was only in 2015, with arrests being made in Brazil on a weekly basis, that the bank obliged Odebrecht to recognize in internal files that it was a beneficiary of the secret accounts.

Marcelo Odebrecht is in jail today. Miggliaccio still faces trial and dozens of politicians around Latin America are under investigation. But official files from June 2017 kept in the business registry of the Canton of Geneva identifies Valiton as still one of the directors of the bank. Refusing to comment on the specific situation, the bank (which we are not naming for legal reasons) declined to provide an explanation when asked about his conduct. “In line with our policy, we do not comment ongoing legal investigations, particularly when names of persons are at stake.

If requested or where appropriate, we would of course comply with our legal duties towards the competent authorities,” the bank says.

Internally, however, many financial institutions have ordered their managers to reinforce controls over new requests for money transfers from Latin America. Over the past twelve months, account holders also have been invited by Swiss banks to declare their assets. At the same time, bankers visiting clients in Brazil, Peru or elsewhere in the hemisphere are taking extra care, flying with no documents related to their institutions and account holders and with fake business cards pretending to work in other sectors of the economy.

Meanwhile, the U.N. accounced that its independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, would visit Switzerland to examine efforts by the country to curb illicit financial flows, such as tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. The aim, he is quoted as saying, is to identify good practices and whether additional controls need to be implemented.

Jamil Chade is an author and Geneva-based foreign correspondent for Il Folho de Sao Paulo. His latest book is Rio2016: Olympic Myths and Hard Realities (Brookings Institute Press, September 2017) of which is co-author.

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Tom’s Paine LETTER FROM AMERICA

Welcome to the New World of Information Warfare In late 1999, Time Magazine invited readers to participate in an online vote for the most outstanding person of the millennium. The incongruous winner turned out to be Attaturk. An ingenious Turkish hacker had roguishly cobbled together a robot computer program to dramatically multiply the vote for the founding father of modern Turkey. Time’s management quietly dropped the online survey and went back to live editors to make the final choice. As William Dowell writes from Philadelphia, American voters in the November 2016 election were not that lucky.

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THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP as president of the United States appears to have been the result of a perfect political storm in which Russian disinformation was just one of the factors that came together to produce an unexpected result with possibly catastrophic implications for the international system.

In contrast to fears about cyberwarfare targeting industrial installations, like the Stuxnet virus which the U.S. used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, the new tactic focuses on disinformation, taking advantage of the enormous expansion of online communications. The game changer is the increasing availability of data mining, which makes it possible to make extremely detailed profiles of the habits and preferences of specific groups, all of it made possible by the massive expansion of online traffic.

A SHORT STEP FROM COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING TO PROMOTING POLITICIANS Every time you buy something on the Internet or make a search via Google, a small software identification tag, nicknamed a “cookie,” identifies your computer. A record of your transaction is automatically entered into a computer data base and a psychological profile of your intimate habits and preferences begins to take shape.

The theory is that this lets advertisers steer your web experience towards things that interest you. If you like expensive cars, you begin to see an unusual number of advertisements and news flashes involving Mercedes Benz or BMW. It’s a short step from commercial advertising to promoting political personalities.

Republicans proved to be hardly amateurs at using psychological profiling and data mining to gain advantage, mostly by blanketing the internet with damaging and often false information about their opponent, Hillary Clinton, but what surprised everyone was Vladimir Putin’s readiness to get involved in the game.

US intelligence agencies began detecting signs of Russian intervention early in the election campaign.

Communications intercepts by the National Security Agency captured a conversation with Russia’s head of military intelligence saying that a surprise was being arranged for Hillary Clinton, and other intercepts indicated that the top echelons of the Kremlin were involved. Facebook has now reported that Russian sources paid upwards of $100,000 for nearly 3,000 low cost advertisements on Facebook under false names to disseminate a skillful blend of damaging information and fake news intended to influence American voters. At least 500 phony Facebook sites were traced back to Russia, while pretending to be from elsewhere. The New York Times traced down just one of these sites, which pretended to belong to Melvin Redick, who supposedly lived in Pittsburgh. Redick, it turned out, had never existed.

Photographs pretending to show his family life turned out to have been lifted from an unsuspecting Facebook user in Brazil who had no idea that he had unwittingly become part of the US presidential election debate.

CREDIBILITY AS A BACKBONE FOR DISINFORMATION Russia has based its disinformation strategy on two pillars. The first is Russia’s government owned cable TV station, RT (the name is an acronym for Russia Today), and the second is an online site, Sputnik, which is actually a modernized reincarnation of a former, government-owned news agency that replaced the old Radio Moscow. The cable television channel is a nearly direct copy of glossy US sites such as CNN and Fox News.

Recognizable American personalities, such as well-known TV presenter Larry King, and former New York Times correspondent, Chris Hedges, have been added to increase credibility.

While Fox News broadcasts a heavy conservative propaganda line, RT broadcasts news that more or less adheres to the perspectives of Vladimir Putin’s information advisers. RT manages a skillful blend of actual news with intermittent doses of carefully-crafted propaganda and distorted or outright fake news. The idea is to give the impression of “mainstream media” credibility to information which is then echoed to a wide range of social media sites via Sputnik, its online distribution network.

Sputnik, modeled somewhat after the US site, Buzzfeed, can afford to be cheekier and looser with the facts than RT, whose main purpose is to establish credibility. In a sense, Sputnik’s credibility is based on cutting through euphemisms and political correctness to put its message into simpler terms that everyone can understand.

LINKING PURLOINED DEMOCRATIC PARTY EMAILS TO RUSSIAN SABOTAGE When it came to the US elections last November, the system’s major coup was a series of purloined emails from the Democratic Party, which helped to fuel an attack campaign against Hillary Clinton. The stolen emails were distributed initially by WikiLeaks, but then picked up and enhanced by various other social media outlets. US intelligence officials noted that the software used to break into the Democratic Party’s email server contained the same lines of computer code that had previously shown up in Russia’s military intelligence attempts to sabotage the Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s incursion in the eastern Ukraine.

It also turned out that RT had coincidentally previously hired WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to run a 12-part series on its cable network. RT had also paid Donald Trump’s future National Security Director, Michael Flynn, a modest sum to come to Moscow and appear at a dinner with Vladimir Putin. The icing on the cake was that Trump’s lead campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had not only worked previously with Russian lobbying efforts in the Ukraine, but had also offered at one point to help expand Putin’s influence in Washington. All of that is part of an ongoing investigation that may take years to complete.

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TOM’S PAINE | LETTER FROM AMERICA: WELCOME TO THE NEW AGE OF INFOWAR

Donald Trump’s senior strategist through the early months of his administration, Steve Bannon, is also considered an expert at manipulating social media and a staunch advocate for the effectiveness of data mining in gaining an advantage in politics. Before the election, Bannon convinced an eccentric billionaire, Robert Mercer, to buy Cambridge Analytica (CA), a data mining specialist.

The company’s surveys, which cost upwards of $400 million, indicated that voters for the most part did not favor Donald Trump, but they liked Hillary Clinton even less. Bannon’s strategy advice was to forget about trying to convince anyone to vote for Trump but to focus instead on demolishing Hillary Clinton’s reputation. A similar Big Data approach was deployed in the United Kingdom to push voters toward Brexit during last year’s referendum on the European Union.

There followed a barrage of fake news accounts accusing Hillary Clinton of everything from murder to sexual depravity. The most outrageous claim was that she had allegedly run a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington DC. None of it was true, but in a race in which the vote was very nearly equally divided it only took a slight nudge to shift the vote in favor of a Trump victory in critically important “swing” states.

A good part of the investigation that is now going on is intended to determine whether the Trump campaign, which had paid hundreds of millions of dollars for data analysis of voter preferences might have subsequently turned this information over to the Russians for use in their network dispensing disinformation. Most of the fake news emanating from Russian sites was aimed at exacerbating

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racial and ethnic tensions among voters rather than openly campaigning for Trump. The idea was that increasing ethnic tensions and anti-immigration hysteria along with anger at the Washington establishment would do more to edge the vote in favor of Trump than anything else. A similar attempt was made to boost Marine LePen during subsequent French elections, but proved less successful, mostly because Macron was a better candidate.

From the Kremlin’s perspective, Trump’s victory ended up as a win-win situation. Trump’s bumbling incompetence and go-it-alone boosterism of “America First,” is likely to put an end to America’s status as a superpower. That leaves the field open for Putin to expand his influence. Having profited from its tentative efforts to take on Washington, the Russians are expected to try similar manoeuvers in European elections.

And all this may just have been the beginning. In March, the Russians peppered hundreds of US Defense Department employees with links to news stories about sporting events and entertainment that the employees might be interested in. When the unsuspecting targets clicked on the sites, a software program automatically downloaded switching control of their computers and iPhones to a group of outside hackers. Pentagon computer experts struggled to regain control of their machines. It was just an advance taste of what to expect in the future.

America’s editor William Dowell is a journalist and writer who writes the Tom’s Paine column from Philadelphia. He has previously worked for TIME magazine and ABC News as a foreign correspondent covering Europe, Asia and northern Africa.

GLOBAL GENEVANS

KLAUS SCHWAB: Geneva’s unlikeliest revolutionary Jean Calvin, Lenin and the treacherous Russian nihilist Sergei Nechayev may have been the scariest revolutionaries to haunt Geneva’s streets. But a one-time Geneva professor with a vision and a mission to humanize business may have a more benign impact on the 21st century.

BY

Peter Hulm

YOU’D HARDLY EXPECT A BUSINESS PROFESSOR or company executive to name Nelson Mandela and Shimon Peres as the two people he most admires. But for Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, both are at the top of his list of most inspiring global leaders. This despite a testy encounter with Mandela on the stage of Davos in 1992 when Klaus tried to intervene because the anti-apartheid activist largely overran his allotted time in the first global platform to include all the South African leaders.

Mandela, for his part, said the Davos 1992 visit made a major impact on his perception of the world and particularly of free markets, influencing substantially his policies as president. He came back in 1997 and 1999 and a friendship developed between them.

Mixing with the rich, famous and powerful for over 40 years at the annual Davos meeting of his organization, Klaus Schwab – now in his 80th year – is well-aware of the Forum’s image problem. “It’s very easy to say that Davos is a rich man’s club or a club of the powerful and construct a kind of conspiracy of people committed completely to shareholder principles and ruthless organization against humanity,” he acknowledges. But he insists: “It’s just the contrary. What we want to show is that ruthless organization or thinking about business without taking into consideration social dimensions in the end is self-destructive.”

So he’s proud of having invited the German Green Party leader Petra Kelly to the Davos debates as early as 1983. He enlisted trade unionist Philip Jennings from Nyon to bring international labour leaders to present their views to business leaders every year, and gave a stage to the Swiss maverick eco-campaigner Franz Weber. Equally unusual for a professor in the spreadsheet-bound MBA environment, Schwab has always believed in the importance of personal contacts.

That, in fact, was how he got his start in think-tanking and international networking. The former French Premier Raymond Barre, then at the European Union, supported Klaus -- as he is known to all his staff -- in putting together the first Davos meetings, when its future was in doubt. Friends from Harvard and elsewhere, such as the economist J.K. Galbraith, turned up at Davos mark 1 to introduce 450 business executives from 31 countries to the U.S. management gospel.

It’s a conviction that has served him well. It led in 1999 to the signing of an agreement between Switzerland and the U.S. settling a dispute over the accounts of Nazi Holocaust victims. Greek and Turkish leaders pulled back from the brink of war in 1988 and signed a “Davos Declaration” to defuse tensions. Talks this year in CransMontana haven’t taken them much further forward.

Similar top-level encounters helped open up a dialogue between the two Koreas, East and West Germany, in Vietnam, the Middle East as well as in South Africa. There is now talk that the World Economic Forum should step in to mediate a re-assessing of Britain’s Brexit which many, including the business community, consider could be a plunge into the abyss and a dire security threat for Europe.

German Vice-Chancellor Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s appeal to the world at Davos to take Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at his word when proposing reforms is widely credited with giving the impetus to the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the unification of Germany. Genscher later said he was well aware of the global and privileged platform that Davos would give him, and paid tribute to Klaus in making this possible.

An informal meeting organized by the Forum led to the launching of the Uruguay Round of global trade negotiations and later the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) emerged from informal talks in Davos.

The “Earth Summit” on Environment and Development also took its first steps at the Forum in Davos.

The now-defunct Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) shows how difficult it is to pull off such feats, even with a schmoozer of the caliber of Bill Clinton. As you can read in The New York Review of Books (8 June 2017), the Initiative was mooted on his flight to the 2004 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting as a “different, better” Davos.

Clinton’s advisors promoted CGI to their boss to stimulate action on the most pressing global problems “instead of just jabbering and networking and drinking little cups of espresso”.

Apart from this gross misreading of the World Economic Forum, the Initiative -- which ex-President Clinton announced at the 2005 Annual Meeting -developed a new approach to philanthropy but shut down after 12 years. Critics noted of the CGI: “Too many of the feel-good, high-profile announcements have ended up

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GLOBAL GENEVANS | KLAUS SHWAB: GENEVA’S UNLIKELIEST REVOLUTIONARY

meaning not much.” The CGI was definitely a club of likeminded leaders.

“People like Franz Weber, when I invited him to come to Davos at the end of the 1970s, he was looked on as the enemy,” Schwab recalls.

“Today business has evolved and executives consider representatives of Greenpeace as legitimate discussion partners with whom they don’t share always every idea but with whom they consider a dialogue necessary.”

In a mantra he has stuck to throughout his Forum career, Schwab says: “Our job in Davos to a certain extent, if not to a large extent, is to confront business with the mirror of social expectation.” He warned of a populist backlash against globalization and automation 21 years ago, well before the “me-first” political movement gained hold in the industrialized nations. Today his latest project is to help the world prepare for what he calls “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”, likely to robotize many middle-class and blue collar jobs out of existence and abolish the competitive advantage of cheap labour in developing countries.

Born in Ravensburg, Germany, on 30 March 1938, Schwab was involved in efforts after the Second World War to promote reconciliation between French and German young people. His father was the managing director of a Swiss machinery company and led several industry and business associations.

In 1957 Klaus moved to Zurich to study engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and simultaneously economics and social sciences at the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg. He was a Geneva management consultant and part-time professor with a masters in public administration from Harvard when he read Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s The American Challenge, warning that Europe was falling behind the U.S. He set up the European Management Forum and organized the first Davos meeting, choosing the Grisons resort because he liked skiing and thought his colleagues would find it an additional attraction, even at the lowest point of the winter season. That same year he married Hilda Stoll, his first Forum collaborator, whom he describes as his “social conscience”.

Thanks to Klaus, the annual Forum meetings have dispelled the bleak image of Davos presented in Thomas Mann’s famous novel The Magic Mountain (1924), about a hopeless sanatorium in a world that has lost all its human values. The sanatorium where Mann’s daughter Erika spent time in 1921 is now the grand Hotel Bellevue.

At least, healthy people no longer walk around with a

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handkerchief in front of their faces as they did in the early 20th century. And the celebrities and billionaires are likely to walk along the snowy streets like everyone else.

One of the most insulting labels pinned on Annual Meeting attendees was “Davos Man”, Samuel Huntington’s description of business leaders concerned only with the financial bottom line.

There is indeed a Davos Man, Schwab admits (women make up only a minority of the participants, 21 in 2017, though a lot more of the ‘talking heads’ and support staff).

An informal Forum Survey in 1999 estimated that probably only 120,000 people around the world were involved in the cutting edge of global affairs. “Davos Man is the person who is at the forefront of this new revolution taking place -- call it the Internet revolution or whatever -- the change of life caused by technology,” he suggests. “There are very few people who really understand what is going on.”

From the beginning Schwab has championed what he calls “multi-stakeholder cooperation”. In his view, this means ordinary people, activists, academics and scientists as well as shareholders and business executives. His vision throughout the years has always included a way to make the Forum more than a meeting place for coffee and jabbering. Much of the time Schwab has been ahead of technology’s capacity to deliver on his ambitions. But with a new generation of business leaders and a changed world from the “greed is good” environment (at least until the Trump backlash), the Forum now boasts 12 “communities” ranging from civil society representatives to young global leaders (aged 20-30), social entrepreneurs and young scientists (under 40). Its Network of Global Future Councils studies developments in robotics, biotechnologies, cities, education, consumption, even the humanitarian system, and similar topics far beyond profit and loss accounts.

Contributing editor Peter Hulm was an editorial consultant to the World Economic Forum for its Davos meetings and other activities from 1984 to 2011. He wrote our article on The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Hulm has met Klaus Schwab on numerous occasions.

GLOBAL GENEVANS

David Horobin Recently appointed head of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) Crisis Management Cluster, David Horobin has a lifetime of experience on the frontlines of complex emergencies. After 25 years with the Red Cross/Red Crescent he’s bringing a unique lesson into the GCSP classroom: managing a crisis effectively is all about teamwork.

GG: As a quick backstory how did you come into crisis management?

DH: I’m a logistician by profession. Out of university, armed with a Masters in Transport I started my professional life moving lettuce, burgers and perishables around London with a large fleet of trucks working triple shifts.

This was the early days of time critical logistics. Every day something would go wrong and I quickly learned to think on my feet. One day my boss asked me if I might like to go to Angola – as the Red Cross were looking for specialist logisticians. It wasn’t really a question, more an instruction. One week later I found myself spiralling down to Huambo in an unpressurised ICRC Twin Otter.

This was how I became one of the early logistics professionals in the humanitarian business. Working in complex emergencies got into my system and has remained ever since – it’s a bit like malaria. Since that first mission I’ve been involved directly or indirectly in most major international emergencies whether with the Red Cross or various governments.

GG: With 15 years at the ICRC you’ve no doubt seen a spectrum of risks, crises beyond the ordinary, where indeed lives are at risk.

DH: Given the Internatonal Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is usually on the frontlines, armed attacks, kidnap, and armed checkpoints do come up. A lot of incidents happen when you’re on the move, in transport, so you have to identify where you’re most vulnerable and then seek to mitigate risks around that – without resorting to armed guards. But the main risks in the relief sector are generally more safety related, such as bad driving or catching a disease. This is fed by a general lack of awareness. I had a good colleague, a friend, with extensive field experience, who was killed by a huge swarm of bees in Sudan. So the unpredictable, almost Biblical type events are out there.

GG: One of the aims of risk management in conflict environments is improving the working culture, to instil a sense of good behaviour. Is spreading that message across the workforce, getting everyone to comply, is that a challenge?

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GLOBAL GENEVANS | DAVID HOROBIN

DH: That’s a good point. The ICRC is justifiably proud of its security culture. But developing and maintaining a security culture at the individual level, and collective level, takes time, takes effort, takes training – and can easily be lost. It is something that is passed through experience, exposure and good management. You don’t learn about developing a security culture from a book. It’s part of the DNA of an organisation. Airlines, oil and gas companies will each have their own type of security or safety culture. Issues around behaviour, comportment, compliance, how you talk to people, how you engage with people – whether at a checkpoint, speaking to a soldier or a victim of armed conflict – is very important. That will affect your security and potentially their security.

GG: One of the aims of your courses at the GCSP is to take people out of their existing operational culture, place them in a different context, to see a new dimension for resolving crisis situations. If you can’t learn security culture by reading a book, what can you gain from taking a 2-day course?

DH: The GCSP executive education series is about improving individual and organisational resilience in crisis situations. Crisis today is diverse, from cyber to pandemics or armed attacks, which have hit several European cities in the past months. In this new geopolitical context, hugely disruptive events can happen anywhere in the world. Our focus at GCSP is showing how organisations can respond to such events – looking at the anatomy of crises, how they develop, and how 42

to organise and make good decisions under abnormal conditions. Managing a major event badly not only affects your staff’s welfare but can impact your organisation’s reputation and its bottom line. When risks to large corporations are headline news – should you wheel out the CEO to face the cameras and the families, if he or she does not know what is going on and has no training?

GG: This cost of failure at the corporate level also happens at the national level when governments fail to anticipate humanitarian needs on the ground in times of emergency. One recalls Katrina in 2005 and more recently Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean.

DH: I was posted to Washington DC during Hurricane Katrina as the high level coordinator for the European Commission, whilst I was working for DFiD in UK – it was a memorable mission. Whilst every situation is different, during Katrina more than 1,500 people lost their lives.

This was not the case in the Caribbean despite the larger scale of damage. The investment in improving resilience at the population level has shown significant progress in the region since 2005. This means more shelters, higher construction standards, improved zonal planning. All of these factors save lives. FEMA was radically changed after the lessons learned from Katrina, and was far more proactive this year in informing and communicating with the local population, and on the evacuation planning.

There is also far better technology so that tracks can be plotted and specific contingencies made – but nature remains highly unpredictable.

GG: This type of responsiveness in the US was not necessarily applied in the European response (to allied islands in the Caribbean), which has been roundly criticised.

DH: The UK government has well equipped navy vessels pre-positioned in the region ahead of each hurricane season. They are there to spearhead the initial UK response.

But of course it takes time for the resources to get where they’re needed – the logistical constraints can be significant.

In these days of instant gratification we quickly ignore the sheer time involved to move from A to B to C when there are damaged roads, no power and collapsed infrastructure. Another factor is the communications networks.

Several islands in the Caribbean had been incommunicado for days, nobody knew what was going on. Everybody relies on their mobile phones today, but in major disasters the GSM network can be knocked out very quickly. The same can apply in conflict contexts, when authorities deliberately shut down communications systems, a highly effective tactic for disempowering the population.

GG: With issues of preparedness, resilience, and foresight, there is also the challenge of decision-making, or the culture of decision-making. Tell us about your experience during the Japan Eastern Earthquake, and then the Fukushima reactor meltdown.

DH: If we look at crisis management from the lens of Western-dominated International Geneva, it is about having a crisis management team and processes for rapidly making decisions, with each team member assigned tasks. This is the norm here – but this may not be the norm elsewhere where critical decisions may be made in a different style. This is what I call “decision-making by atmosphere”, which is not overtly dictatorial at all, but based more on a culture of respect for elders or hierarchical position irrespective of competence – a desire for consensus. Sometimes the tactical detail of crisis planning is made over tea late at night, by those having the authority to make those decisions.

GG: Would you say decision-making by atmosphere was an inhibitor to effective crisis response to the Fukushima event?

DH: It was certainly unusual, and would seem so for many Westerners who have not spent any time in Japan. That said, the capacity of the Japanese authorities to respond to the impact of a massive earthquake, a tsunami, and then a major nuclear event, was absolutely remarkable – and nothing like I’ve ever seen in my life. Had any other country had to cope with this triple whammy, there would have been massive civil unrest.

GG: Corporations are perhaps the opposite example, bringing both hierarchical decision-making and rapid mobility to meet the challenge of global threats. What are some of the blind spots in crisis management that overturn best-laid plans?

DH: In my years dealing with many forms of crisis – security, operational, reputational – one issue is fundamental.

Training together as a team, understanding how to work as a team, is essential. I do not believe in today’s world that a major crisis can be handled by one individual. Certainly not given the speed at which things happen and are reported.

There are too many complex tasks that need to be handled by people with the competence to fulfill those tasks. You have to understand how to make good decisions based on incomplete information.

GG: When organisations delegate crisis management externally, to private military contractors or crisis responders, is this constructive, having others solve problems for us?

DH: Given certain contexts and organisational structures, that may be appropriate. Not managing a crisis correctly can wipe out a company or have such a negative impact on staff that they leave. However I don’t think leaders can fully abrogate their responsibility. These days employees and families will scrutinise who is leading the crisis response and what competences and experience they have. Get it wrong and you can be sued.

GG: Central to your coursework is helping people make better decisions. Doing that requires them knowing each other and how communication works within a team. In crisis situations, where is it that teamwork breaks down the most?

DH: Firstly, there is the question: “Are we in a crisis?” Who in the organisation is going to push the alarm button that says, “We’re now in a crisis – and therefore need to activate our crisis plan.” Who makes that decision is not always clear.

Companies can have good plans yet remain unsure who is going to activate the crisis response. Secondly, it is imperative that executives make good decisions. How they make decisions – and ensuring people around the table understand how they make decisions – this is essential. Some executives are extremely good leaders, but are not used to situations where they are missing information. Their style may be to rely on intuition, but in a crisis this may not always be appropriate. In the GCSP course we explore the psychology of bias in decision making, balancing intuition with analysis, and enhancing the skills of the individual and the collective.

GG: Poor stress management can also lead to poor decision-making, which is where simulation training can be extremely valuable.

DH: Crisis management is not about coping with your daily work at 300 mph. At GCSP we pull our course participants outside the realm of the familiar, adding different forms of stress as the simulation unfolds. Stress has its positives and negatives. In a crisis situation you’ve got multiple elements: dealing with the media, dealing with families, with business continuity, with reputational risk. Crisis teams need to understand and recognize the signs of stress – and the impact it can have on decision-making. Our real-time simulation training is a way to explore and learn at the group level, improving skills and resilience in times of crisis.

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

PADDLING FOR CANCER:

Reaching out with success Fund-raising for events or public service campaigns is always a challenge. How does one reach out to the local community and what is the most effective way to get people involved? As Sally Alderson writes, one Lake Geneva initiative that has proven particularly successful is the English-speaking Cancer Association (ESCA).

IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE UP IN THE JURA (on the shores of the Lac de Joux to be precise) on the first Sunday of every September you might be surprised to see some Chinese dragonboats racing along the lake, cheered on by up to 2,000 people. The locals are used to it by now because the Dragonboat Festival, now known as Paddle for Cancer, has been a ‘must’ on Geneva’s multinational and sporting calendar for the past ten years. How did it all start?

The English Speaking Cancer Association (ESCA), set up at the beginning of this century, offers emotional support, practical help and information in English to cancer patients, their families and friends in Geneva, Vaud and neighbouring France. It has proved a essential line of support for those often newly arrived in Geneva with little French and no family network to help cope when

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a devastating diagnosis arrives out of the blue. Apart from counselling, ESCA offers individual peer support, a welcoming Drop-In Centre with a well-stocked library, gym classes, yoga, art therapy and a walking group. All these services are free-of-charge.

As ESCA relies totally on donations, it was imperative to raise the funds which would enable it to offer these services. Given that dragonboat racing has become associated with cancer support in other parts of the world, it was decided to try it here. Lake Geneva was a no-no (too much water traffic), but the sporting community of the Lac de Joux was anxious to attract more visitors and offered their facilities – a shoreline base, help from local sports clubs and a security rescue boat, with a warm welcome thrown in.

The association approached various multinational companies not only to sponsor the races but to actively take part alongside all-female teams, groups of friends, sports bodies, student groups, hospital staff members – you name it. If you can raise a team and the entry fee, you can reserve your own boat or fill in spaces which do not yet have the full complement of paddlers. Companies found that apart from the honour and glory of winning (and they can get very competitive), the day provides an opportunity to bond with colleagues out of the office.

And not just colleagues – there is a mini-regatta for children, plus a host of play activities, face-painting, bake sales, bookstalls and food trucks so that it is also a lovely family outing. Even the family dogs come along to wade into the water, though they have to be dissuaded from swimming out to join their paddling owners. An army of volunteers sets up tents, registers participants as well as feeds the volunteers and technical teams that come with the boats. They also embrace a myriad of tasks that go along with such an event (one young man regularly volunteers to keep the chemical toilets in good order). There’s even a massage tent to deal with paddlers’ aching muscles.

In 2016 two corporate teams celebrated their ten years of dragonboat racing : Cargill (in spite of their boat sinking during the very first race in 2006 !) and Merck.

It was also the tenth anniversary for three Open teams: Dons and Divas, ESCA Paddlers and Bosom Pals Paddlers.

Partenaire principal

For the third consecutive year, the Corporate Fundraisers Challenge Cup was won by Trafigura, which raised an amazing CHF 116,500. This amount was then matched by the Trafigura Foundation. Some other Promotional and Event sponsors made important financial and in-kind gifts which, together with the additional activities around the site, came to just over CHF 69,000.

These funds are allocated to ESCA’s support services and outreach efforts. In addition, a portion of last year’s amount went to a collaborative venture of the HematoOncology Pediatric Unit of the Lausanne CHUV and the University of Lausanne-EPFL to provide a venue, equipment and professional sports therapeutic supervision for children with cancer.

Why has Paddle for Cancer been such a success? The ESCA organisers knew that companies like the opportunity to do something outside the office which is not merely a social event. It can be hard work organizing teams, not to mention the physical demands of paddling – more strenuous than you might think. But the goal of trying to help people in need of support and encouragement makes participants feel that all the effort is worthwhile. And if you can enjoy yourself at the same time, well, what’s not to like?

Sally Alderson is a freelance journalist and longtime ESCA member and volunteer.

Avec l’aimable soutien de

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

Keeping up the good fight for global trade

Brazil’s Roberto Azevêdo may have one of the most thankless jobs in international Geneva. At the start of his second four-year term on September 1, 2017, as chief of the World Trade Organization (WTO), he is grappling with new political forces bent on gutting the global trade system’s liberal foundations.

BY

Brij Khindaria

MILLIONS OF RICH COUNTRY VOTERS BLAME open trade and economic globalization for the precariousness of their jobs. Failure to win them over will emaciate WTO. The Geneva-based organization, however, can no longer stay aloof. It can no longer claim to be just a technical group supervising the system of legally-binding agreements that regulate global trade among its 164 member states. Trade directly affects ordinary lives. Its fights are being settled in streets and voting booths.

As the prime proponent of freer trade and globalization, WTO cannot be solely a conclave of experts interacting only with governments, corporations, lobbyists and formal non-governmental organizations. Now, ordinary people are insisting on being heard. A joint 2017 report of the World Bank, IMF and WTO argues strongly for freer trade but admits that neglect of workers left behind by globalization is spurring opposition to open trade.

In response, WTO seems tongue-tied. Anger is erupting despite the millions of well-paid jobs created by globalization. It has also helped each dollar to go further by lowering prices of countless purchases, including food, clothes, kitchenware, computers and smart phones.

A NEED TO DEAL WITH INEQUALITIES World trade agreements have reduced barriers, harmonized procedures, given special benefits to poorer countries and settled disputes impartially. But they also cast shadows that raise questions about their adequacy for today’s world economy. At core is the rise of China and others, which is challenging the long-dominant US and European models of trade and economic governance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that emerging and developing economies now account for 60 percent of global GDP (gross domestic product), almost double the level of a decade ago. They were responsible for more than 80 percent of global growth since 2008 and speeded up the reduction of global poverty.

The utility of freer trade is not disputed but the injustice of associated inequalities can no longer be treated with band aids. Credit Suisse estimated total global wealth at $256 trillion in 2016 but the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population collectively own less than 1 per cent while the top 10 percent own 89 percent. Global debt has become a menace, escalating to a record $217 trillion

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or 325 percent of world GDP in late 2016, the Institute for International Finance (IIF) reported.

Poorer countries benefited as trade grew from about 40 percent of global GDP in 1990 to 58 percent of a much larger number in 2015 while foreign direct investment rose from about 10 percent of global GDP to 34 per cent,

by World Bank estimates.

Many sectors boomed. About 400 communication satellites connect the earth and 5.7 billion people or threequarters of global population will have mobile phone subscriptions by 2020, says a 2017 GSM Association report.

But troubles continue to gather. Trade has slowed for five years in a row since 2012 and at 1.7 per cent in 2017 will grow slower than GDP for the first time in 15 years.

That contrasts with a 12.4 percent peak in 2010 and trade volumes that rose twice as fast as global GDP between 1985 and 2007.

NO LONGER BELIEVING THE DREAM Malaise is surging in Western factories as workers struggle to compete with high-quality but cheaper imports from countries like China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia and others. They see only uncertainty in their future, and rage even if unwarranted by facts. Political crises loom as frustrated voters turn towards anti-globalization leaders.

They see open trade evangelists as elites too insulated from economic pain to empathize with their “down here” anxieties. They no longer believe the dream.

Therein lies Azevêdo’s challenge. Yes, globalization is desirable but he and others like him have failed miserably to show that their hearts are in the right place. Nor have they shown they have real-world remedies that would reward patience. President Donald Trump’s rise and Britain’s decision to exit the European Union express the rising despair. Centrist French President Emmanuel Macron awoke new hope but it may be premature because his anti-globalization rivals have half the electorate. His success may not, after all, signal a Europe-wide disenchantment with hard-line leaders pushing protectionist, anti-immigrant and keep-jobs-at-home agendas.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s recently re-elected leader, may help to dent the tide of anti-globalists and populists in Europe but her country is not a paragon of trade virtues.

Critics think Germany’s very large trade surpluses,

Delegates at a recent World Trade Organization conference. [PHOTO: WTO]

indebted banks and sleepy levels of domestic demand are among leading causes of global economic imbalances.

EU growth and other economic forecasts have improved a little during 2017 and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivered an optimistic “state-of-Europe” speech to European Parliament in September. It was noteworthy because his 2016 speech was full of gloom and doom. But there is scope for many slips between cup and lip this year and next, depending partly on the protectionist actions of Trump and mercantilist actions of China’s Xi Jinping.

A CHALLENGE TO WTO’S RELEVANCE For almost half of voters in Europe and America it would be reckless to pretend that the WTO-backed trade system is delivering. The reality is that extremists on both right and left are feeding at its trough. Grabbing this bull by the horns may mean turning the WTO away from idealizing open trade to promote job security. That would outrage developing and emerging countries, putting WTO’s relevance at stake since rich-country politicians are already disavowing liberal principles to save their own jobs.

New realities are also harsh for workers outside the West. The IIF predicts a fourth straight year of negative

capital flows in 2017, with 25 emerging markets seeing $490 billion flow out and only $70 billion come in. China should see net outflows of $560 billion. On these treacherous slopes, Azevêdo has the Sisyphean task of persuading everyone to keep up the good fight against protectionism and globalization. He is already reeling from the comatose 16-year-old Doha Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations and Trump’s push for bilateral and regional trade deals instead of WTO’s universal model. He will have to stare down Trump, the wilful protectionist leading the world’s only superpower, with a $16.5 trillion economy. His job will be gutted if Trump continues to believe that the trade system is rigged against American workers.

WTO is shuddering because global trade flows have changed. Pain is inevitable as frazzled American and European workers adjust to the rising ambitions of hungry millions in new trading powers like China, Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico and South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). If Azevêdo does not reach out to those workers’ hearts and minds, other Trumps will arise elsewhere.

Brij Khindaria is a UN-based writer focussing on economic affairs, trade, finance, development and international security. He contributes op-eds and analyses to online and print media in the US, UK and India.

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR

The right place for the world’s human rights award

Ahmed Mansoor, a human rights activist from the UAE, giving his acceptance speech via Skype for the 2015 Martin Ennals Award. Mansoor is on a travel ban since 2011. [PHOTO: VILLE DE GENEVE]

In recent years, critical awareness for human rights has prompted cities, such as Stockholm and Sydney, but also organizations around the world to establish their own awards highlighting the work of human rights defenders. Only one place, however, merits the distinction of acting as the world’s human rights capital, and that is Geneva. Not only does the city serve as an international hub for key planetary concerns, but it also commands a truly global human rights prize: the Martin Ennals Award, often referred to as the human rights version of the Nobel Prize.

BY

Hans Thoolen

WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS (HRDs), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights law risk being a dead letter. Almost all human rights organisations have a mandate to come to the succour of threatened colleagues via urgent appeals and other campaigns. Some 150 now run an award and the number keeps growing – half were created since the beginning of the 21st century.

Curiously, however, the best known of these awards, the Nobel Peace Prize, is given out annually in Oslo and not in Geneva, the international hub for human rights.

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Alfred Nobel died on 10 December. Decades later, the United Nations declared 10 December as International Human Rights Day and designated 21 September as the International Day of Peace. The curious result is that the Nobel Peace Prize – intended for contributions to ‘peace’, not necessarily ‘human rights’ – is awarded every year in Oslo on 10 December, which is ‘Nobel Day’ in Sweden and Norway, and International Human Rights Day for the rest of the world.

In 1992, I became involved in the creation of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA).

Originally, this was meant to keep alive the memory of the first Secretary General of Amnesty International and a key figure behind the creation of the modern human rights movement. In recognition of his work, 10 global human rights organisations, (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), Front Line Defenders, Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung, HURIDOCS, Human Rights First, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Service for Human Rights, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), all agreed to form the Jury. Later, a panel of regional NGOs joined the common effort.

The small volunteer secretariat operated out of Geneva, but many of the first award ceremonies were held abroad in places where the laureates are active. In 2001, it was decided to make Geneva the permanent location for the annual ceremony. By 2008, the lakeside city started offering serious support by making the award part of its “International Geneva” plan, an effort to galvanize the private and public sectors, including the rest of Switzerland, with regard to the region’s crucial importance as a hub for critical global issues. Since then, cooperation has grown into an admirable win-win partnership with the award run on a fully independent basis, while Geneva provides the infrastructure for the ceremony.

This suits all parties. The actual decisions are made by an autonomous jury of experts enabling the city to avoid having to deal with controversial aspects.

The wisdom of this separation was reiterated in 2016 when the MEA went to an imprisoned scholar belonging to the Uyghur minority. China reacted furiously, but its target ended up being the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who courageously persisted in presenting the award at the ceremony as his predecessors have done over the years.

How effective are human rights awards? To answer this, one needs to know in which way they are intended to help human rights defenders. In the first place, all awards seek to offer recognition and encouragement at the psychological level. This goal should not be trivialized as activists often have to work in difficult environments.

Furthermore, they may prove unpopular even within their own social circles.

Secondly, many awards come with some financial support. Even relatively small amounts go far in cash-strapped organizations, many based in developing countries.

Finally, the most important but also elusive goal is protection. The latter is not really possible without a fair degree of publicity. An example: On 13 May 2008, Mutabar Tajibaeva, a detained human rights activist in Uzbekistan, was announced as that year’s MEA Laureate. A few weeks later, on 2 June, she was released from prison on medical grounds, and a few months later, was allowed to travel abroad. She came to Geneva to receive the MEA in person, declaring publicly that the award saved her life. However, one cannot state categorically that her release was a direct result of the award; many other actors contributed to the pressure that resulted in her release from prison.

Mutabar Tadjibaeva smiling during a gathering of human rights defenders [PHOTO FRONTLINE DEFENDERS]

That such impact cannot be taken for granted is shown by the case of Ahmed Mansoor from the United Arab Emirates, the 2015 Laureate. The government did not lift his travel ban and he had to address the audience via a video link. His case received further global coverage in August 2016. Flaws in Apple’s iOS operating system were discovered by Mansoor who alerted security researchers to unsolicited text messages he had received. Apple has since released a software update that addresses the problem. Then, on 20 March, 2017, around midnight, Ahmed Mansoor was arrested at his home in a raid by a large team of the Emirates’ security forces. His importance as a human rights defender was demonstrated by the international response to this sudden arrest. In addition to many newspapers and social media, the UN Special Procedures and the EU Parliament quickly called for his release. But today, six months later, he continues to linger in jail.

Some believe that human rights awards can endanger the lives of laureates. Clearly, this is a danger, but the best judge of the balance between increased risk and greater protection remains the human rights defender in question. And generally, they seem to regard public exposure foremost as a form of protection, reflecting the increased importance of the media even in tense situations. The biggest problem with seeking increased protection through publicity is perhaps that the media are not automatically interested in all human rights awards.

That the media are increasingly referring to the MEA as the “Nobel prize for human rights” is perhaps the best sign that after almost 25 years, the award has found its status and place in Geneva. With the delivery of the 2017 prize on 10 October in Geneva, it will again be in the hope to go ‘from the front line to the front page’.

Hans Thoolen is a Dutch national who has worked for various NGOs and inter-governmental organizations, including 12 years in Geneva. He is now retired but not tired. Read his blog: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR

WHISTLEBLOWING & ABUSE

A time for real reform UN bashing is an international sport practiced by select conservative North American and British circles, argues French lawyer Yves Beigbeder, who participated as a young legal aide to the French judge at the Nuremberg trials in post-Nazi Germany. Their aim, he maintains, is to discredit multinational institutions and, further down the line, international law. While both he and others agree the United Nations needs to improve its ways, “Anglo-Saxon” lambasting has led international organizations to adopt counter-productive attitudes such as hiding and denying established facts. The UN has lost face and credibility. Will it embrace real reform for whistleblowers and act against abusers?

BY

Yves Beigbeder

THE UN WAS CREATED IN 1945 not only to maintain global peace and security, but to achieve more effective international cooperation. Critics, however, like to point to the UN’s inability to halt notorious crimes against humanity, such as the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, the massacres of Srebrenica, in South Sudan and the Congo, as well as the wars in Yemen and Syria. The Security Council, for example, was paralyzed during the Cold War, but the same thing is happening with the rise of nationalism and religious extremism in many countries, such as the Burmese military’s hounding of the Rohingya.

None of this augurs well for a reform of the Security Council. Its five permanent members tend to veto any resolution affecting their interests or those of their client states, such as Syria for Russia and Israel for the United States. On the positive side, many governments consider that obtaining a Security Council decision is crucial to give the stamp of legitimacy to any form of international intervention. This includes the use of UN-led peacekeeping operations.

THE U.N. HAS NO REAL CONTROL OVER ITS PEACEKEEPERS One problem, however, is that the UN has no standing security force of its own. This means that participating states contribute their own military and police personnel.

Some nations, such as the Irish and Fijians, have even made peace-keeping a speciality. While identified as UN forces by their blue helmets and badges, the peacekeepers nevertheless wear their country’s uniforms, and they remain under the authority of their own commanders.

The first UN peace-keeping operation was the United Nations Emergency Force on the Egypt-Israel border in 1956, following the Suez crisis. By mid-2017, there were 112,911 troops, police and civilian personnel involved with

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16 UN peacekeeping operations. Such interventions are not without danger or cost. Since 1948, some 3,557 peacekeepers have died; 1,776 alone in current operations. The 2016-2017 deployment bill is roughly $7.87 billion.

FAILING TO ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY: A HIGHLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE APPROACH Over the years, UN operations have come under severe criticism, both for the behaviour of its troops and organizational practices. One major controversy blew up over the accidental introduction of cholera in Haiti by Nepalese forces in October 2010. Some 9,000 people died.

Rather than openly debate or rectify the issue, the UN has sought to absolve itself of all responsibility. As part of a long-standing but highly counter-productive approach, the UN Secretary General – presumably advised by the UN Office for Legal Affairs in New York – argued that no government can be held liable.

In his October 2016 report, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston criticised the UN for rejecting any form of compensation, while at the same time claiming absolute immunity. “The UN’s policy is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating. It is also entirely unnecessary,” Alston maintained. As both he and others believe, a new approach is urgently needed, not only for situations such as Haiti but also human rights abuses brought about by peacekeeping contingents.

Such chastising obliged a UN spokesman to admit that the organization needed to do more about Haiti, yet also reiterated its unchanged legal position. The UN finally offered a $400 million aid package, half to help affected communities, the other half to pay for cholera eradication and improved sanitation. This belated, yet unfinanced plan, however, completely failed to face up to the UN’s own responsibility.

One particularly odious crime perpetrated by UN peacekeepers involves demanding sexual favours from minors in exchange for food or money. Despite asserting “zero tolerance” on all forms of sexual exploitation, the UN – for the moment – can do little to enforce its position.

The national officers in charge are formally responsible for maintaining discipline, including punishment of offenders. All the UN can do is issue policy instructions, and, in some cases, send peacekeepers home.

There also appears to be a general reluctance to crack down on abuses, particularly if they are brought to public attention. The case of Swedish whistle-blower Anders Kompass illustrates the UN’s acute embarrassment regarding such cases. The Swedish diplomat, a Field Operations Director for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), leaked a confidential internal report on child abuses in 2014 by French troops in CAR to the Paris authorities. Kompass found himself condemned for misconduct and suspended from his job. An independent panel later found that the charge of misconduct was “disingenuous” and that three senior UN officials had abused their authority. In May 2015, the UN Appeal Tribunal ordered the UN to lift his suspension as prima facie unlawful. Fourteen months later, Kompass resigned after 21 years in UN service.

“The UN’s policy is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating. It is also entirely unnecessary.”

What such incidents demonstrate is that the UN needs to act more in the public interest by halting its retaliations against the whistleblowers and instead focus on conducting proper investigations against alleged perpetrators. There is no room for privileging political considerations at the cost of UN integrity.

PEACEKEEPING REPRESENTS ONE OF THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE OF UN INITIATIVES The world clearly needs peacekeepers. The Uppsala University & Peace Research Institute in Oslo found a direct correlation between increased deployment of ‘blue helmets’ and the gradual decline in the number – and severity – of armed conflicts worldwide since the mid-1990s. Peacekeeping operations not only reduce the level of violence, but also the duration of conflicts. They represent among the most cost-effective forms of intervention in the UN’s toolkit.

For peacekeeping operations to serve their purpose, however, there needs to be real reform. Without doubt, the UN is a frequent target for attacks as a “bloated bureaucracy of overpaid staff” or “underwhelming leadership”. But the UN does suffer from a serious lack of

accountability and trust in senior officials who are often more involved in dysfunctional political intriguing than in ensuring the effective management of their staff.

US diplomat James Wasserstrom, for example, was forced out after disclosing alleged kickbacks involving politicians and senior UNMIK (UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo) officials. He was awarded $65,000 by the UN Dispute Tribunal, but this was later vacated on procedural grounds by the UN Appeal Tribunal. In another case, former UNHCR legal officer Caroline Hunt-Matthes found herself caught up in 13 years of legal battles against UN lawyers for having reported the rape of a refugee by a UNHCR official in Sri Lanka.

The failure to provide impartial oversight and to protect those who dare speak out is one of the UN’s biggest problems. From its creation in 2006 until 2014, the UN Ethics Office received 447 allegations from staff complaining of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing. It only identified four as legitimate. Such approaches need to be completely overhauled.

In May 2017, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres seemed to be moving in the right direction by emphasizing the need for the UN to reform and adapt. He also approved a whistleblower policy. Various member states reiterated this need for change at the General Assembly in New York in September.

But for such assertions to be taken seriously, even in an atmosphere where UN employees are no longer afraid to voice their concerns, the UN is going to need more than just the creation of an ‘independent’ Ethics Office. The unit will require real power to act, rectify injustices and provide compensation. Speedy investigation with transparent procedures and protection for whistleblowers are just the start. Peacekeeping nations themselves will have to start taking immediate and forceful responsibility for the abusive acts of their personnel.

Yves Beigbeder who cut his teeth as a legal aide to the French judge at the Nuremberg Trials lives as an author and legal counsel in Thonon, France, overlooking Lake Geneva.

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52

TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES

LIVING IN A TREEHOUSE

The Jan Michalski

Writers-in-Residence Programme As of this year, the Swiss Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature in Montricher near Lausanne has begun hosting fellows as part of a writers-in-residence programme. Taking advantage of the centre’s exceptional setting and facilities at the base of the Jura Mountains, the writers come to live and work in a series of fullyequipped, ultra-modern treehouses with a view of Lake Geneva and the Alps. Created in 2004, the Foundation, which also offers an annual prize in world literature, seeks to foster literary creativity as well as provide an exceptional setting for exhibitions, concerts, workshops and other events. Indian author Taran N. Khan, one of the first seven Fellows, writes about her experience.

AT THE JAN MICHALSKI FOUNDATION FOR WRITING AND LITERATURE, there are seven cabins or ‘treehouses’ – the structures hang off a concrete canopy – reflecting the forest behind them. Each of these treehouses is allotted to a writer or translator over a fellowship period that can range from a few weeks to six months. One additional cabin has been created as a shared space for writers – where they meet over meals, readings or conversations.

The walls of this room are layered with wooden niches, and in each of these departing writers leave behind a memento, a remembrance of their time at the Foundation. These include stones picked up on walks in the forests surrounding the treehouses, or a ‘letter’ filled with dried wildflowers. There are feathers, maps and a book of memories dedicated to companions encountered. Over my weeks at the Foundation, as one of the first writers to occupy these spaces, I watched this collection of objects grow, like a museum of memories, with artefacts marking time spent with writing and writers.

I spent three months as a writer-in-residence in this unique space, when I also learned about its mission and stature in the world of Swiss letters.

The Foundation was established in 2004 by Swiss publisher Vera Michalski to honour the legacy of her husband, journalist and editor Jan Michalski.

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TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES | LIVING IN A TREEHOUSE: THE JAN MICHALSKI WRITERS-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

Inside one of the foundation’s ‘treehouses’.

While the first writers arrived this spring, the institution has run a multi-lingual library and hosted cultural events for nearly four years.

Perched on a small hilltop by the village of Montricher, it draws visitors from nearby towns as well as further away cities. Often I saw these visitors gazing at the treehouses and the writers with curiosity. Some would wave and offer encouraging words. Others tried to understand our presence and work. Sometimes I would be asked -- “Why have you come all this way away from home to write your book?” The simple answer is: “Sometimes you have to leave home to write your book.” The residency, like other such programmes around the world, offers writers the opportunity to undertake ambitious work, and gives the gift of sustained time to writing processes that would otherwise have languished, or perhaps even been abandoned.

I spent my summer fellowship working on my non-fiction book about the cultural life of Kabul. These included days and nights sequestered in my work space, located at the top of my cabin. Seated in front of a large glass window, I read and wrote while watching the beauty that passed by, in the panorama of Lake Geneva and the surrounding countryside. On certain days, Mont Blanc shimmered with a hard clarity. At night I looked up from the glow of my laptop screen to see the lights of Lausanne glimmering across the darkness. On the other walls, I affixed notes and maps, memories and impressions. In between the blank receptiveness of the walls and the ever-shifting beauty of the glass window, I was able to articulate connections and insights that I had perceived dimly. I found the silence and the luxury of uninterrupted time needed to nurture my work.

My work also bears the inflexion of this particular time in the news cycle, when Afghanistan has once again re-occupied some degree of the world’s attention. Writing about the everyday life of Kabul in the midst of the largest refugee crisis of our times has been a revealing process, and the city seemed both distant and nearby.

Sometimes revelations and insights took less direct routes. Surrounded by writers working in different languages and across genres meant finding roads into new terrain. It meant discovering voices from across the world, who would be difficult to find in a less international setting. Listening to my fellow writers talk about

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Indian author Taran N. Khan, one of the foundation’s first of seven Fellows

their processes opened doors into my own work. There were evenings when I returned from a casual meal and found knots in my text unraveled, or questions answered.

But the fellowship that comes from writers sharing a space goes beyond the texts they are creating. The greatest support for an independent journalist and writer like myself was the ineffable community that emerges during a residency. I relished conversations about weddings in Kabul, Poland and France. I learned from discussions about the realities of writing while raising a family, heard about angelic editors and inscrutable agents. The bonds forged over these weeks, and the collaborations that began there, will endure long after we have all parted ways.

The fellowship also provided me with a valuable, nuanced insight into life in a Swiss village. In the often isolated schedules I followed, I found myself seeking out the rhythms of everyday life – the sounds of children at play, a piano strumming through an open window. For a few weeks I watched my fellow residents -- a collective called Caractères Mobiles – at work. They took ‘orders’ from residents of Montricher and wrote texts just for them. These they often hand delivered to their homes. In this place so far from my own home, this was a reminder that what we all seek are stories.

I left my own token on one of the shelves of the cabin before I left. I like to think of it being seen or used by future residents, forging a delicate link between us, making us part of a fellowship of words that spreads across the world.

Taran N. Khan is a journalist and non-fiction writer based in Mumbai.

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55

DEATH OF A TRANSLATOR

Putting PTSD on the front page

Ed Gorman’s exceptional book, Death of a Translator, initially comes across as a straightforward account of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.

As with other foreign correspondents seeking to cover this incredibly difficult war, Gorman spent weeks trekking the Hindu Kush with Afghan guerrillas. But his narrative includes a completely mad escapade into Red Army-occupied Kabul dressed as a Russian officer, a factor that contributed to 15 years of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. As Edward Girardet writes, Death of a Translator is an incredibly brave book. Ed Gorman has done an enormous favour to all those “war reporters” who are still suffering from PTSD, a condition to which many are loathe to admit.

MOST FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS covering conflicts and humanitarian crises, including those who somewhat presumptuously dub themselves “war reporters”, like to imagine that we are not particularly affected by what we see. We’re a tough lot and we’re certainly not going to go soft by admitting that we have been traumatized by what we have witnessed in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Congo, Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Syria…

Or at least, that’s what we like to tell ourselves.

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As Terence White, a New Zealand reporter, famously announced in an Afghan guerrilla hideaway during the Soviet-directed war: “You’ve got to learn to take steel.” The fact that he ended up severely wounded by shrapnel half a decade later in Kabul was probably not what he had in mind.

Much of our machismo is false bravado, a coping mechanism. Print reporters write “I was there” stories from the frontline but don’t actually hang around longer

than necessary to put together their pieces. They can always talk to people later about what has happened and a good writer can turn disparate facts from the field into something poignant. Nevertheless, our day-to-day experiences are often horrendous even if we don’t recognize such reality at the time: a near escape from an IED (improvised explosive device) or the sudden discovery that you have wandered into a minefield when someone just behind you veers slightly to the left and in the shocking explosion one moment later loses a limb.

TV reporters and producers in the era of instant news are required by their organizations to ensure that to illustrate their ‘standuppers’ they have dramatic footage – often shot by freelance cameramen who are the real ones risking their lives – or, increasingly today, social media videos, which may or may not be the real thing. Some of these journalists are incredibly brave. Others struggle under the time restrictions imposed by New York or London to feed “the bird” – the satellite – and ratings-greedy bosses who forget that wars do not respect time-tables or people. One ABC news producer during the 1990s Bosnian war was under such pressure that he and his colleagues decided to venture across the airport tarmac in Sarajevo in an unprotected vehicle despite warnings by colleagues. He was killed by a sniper’s bullet. His death was bad enough, but so was the impact on all those forced to watch. These are images one does not forget.

It’s hardest for the photographers, however. They actually have to be there to record what is happening if they wish to sell their pictures. Their coping mechanism is to hide behind their lenses. It makes them feel protected and beyond reach. It’s a strange form of detachment and it regularly gets them killed.

So most of us persist as foreign correspondents, regardless of what we endure. Then we look back at our notes and admit we were complete idiots for having taken such risks. But we have our jobs to do, we tell ourselves. So we parachute in and out of war zones, meeting up at night in bars or dilapidated hotels to boast about our experiences. Eventually, we head back to Paris, Geneva or Berlin before moving on to the next story. And this can continue for years.

But no matter how courageous foreign correspondents may be, others around them are in even greater danger.

Unlike ordinary people struggling to survive in their war-shattered towns and villages, or the UN and NGO aid workers who have opted to remain on the ground providing medical and other forms of relief for weeks or months on end, we journalists can always pull out.

Of course, a lot of our tough veneer is utter rubbish.

Many of us are deeply affected, but we don’t wish to admit it. We talk about the ‘action’, the adrenalin surges and the excitement; we rarely talk about how it affects us. That’s far too personal.

One experience in particular came back to me when I was reading Ed Gorman’s book, Death of a Translator.

I was in Somalia in 1991 prior to the US intervention.

There were no more than four or five journalists around.

For the Western media at that time, the First Gulf War was the ‘real’ war because it involved American and

other allied troops. No one really cared about Somalia’s atrocious civil war, though 300-400 human beings were being injured or killed every day.

I had just left Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and found myself driving around Mogadishu in a borrowed UNICEF vehicle with Peter Jouvenal, a highly experienced British cameraman and producer. He was not someone you would describe as an openly ‘sensitive’ human being, but then he had been shipped off to English boarding school at the age of six. You learn to be tough there, or at least to hide any weakness, as a matter of psychological survival.

At the same time, almost secretively, Peter was incredibly kind. But he made damn sure that no one knew it.

We ended up driving around the capital and the outlying sand dunes, literally dodging bullets and mortars, and avoiding drugged out factional fighters (we were kidnapped at gunpoint twice in one day). Then, several hundred metres ahead, an anti-aircraft shell (the factions used such weapons to fire indiscriminately into rival enclaves across the city) smashed into a local market, killing 40 people and wounding scores more. We immediately loaded several of the injured into our pristine white UN vehicle. We drove to a nearby medical station run by Somali medics, including at least one completely exhausted doctor who had not slept for two and a half days.

Outside there were perhaps 20 dead – men, women and children. Their torn bodies were neatly lined up in front of the clinic. Nearby, in the sand a group of seven or eight-year-old boys were playing marbles with polished stones. They paid no attention to the corpses. The bodies had already become part of the scenery.

Inside the building the Somali doctor, who had been trained in Germany, conducted triage as the victims were carried in. No, no, yes, no, no, he would say to his aide, an equally exhausted Somali woman. This one won’t make it, take him outside (to die). Nor this one. Here, this one, send him to op.

We filmed dutifully, but we never used the footage. It was too abhorrent. A German journalist was picking his way among the bodies, his feet trudging two inches deep in blood. At one point he fainted, stumbling backwards with his camera. Peter and I laughed and helped him outside. Silly bugger. Why cover this war if you can’t take it? Of course, all we were doing was covering up our own weakness. Black humour tends to help ward off the horrors by stashing them deep into the recesses of our minds. It was a way of putting up a psychological barrier that no one should ever be allowed to penetrate.

Strangely enough, it was this particular scene that I recalled when reading Death of a Translator. It struck me that I had repeatedly dreamt or otherwise revisited this brutal day in my mind over the years. It was a painful experience but then, I kept telling myself, it was normal, just part of a despicable war and there was nothing you could do about it anyway.

Gorman, who is a friend but who never really told me what had happened, writes about many incidents including the death of an Afghan fighter, his translator, who is commemorated in the book’s title. Abdullah-Jan was killed in a Soviet attack. Ed had known him well but

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BOOK REVIEWS | DEATH OF A TRANSLATOR: PUTTING PTSD ON THE FRONT PAGE

all that he could recall was his friend’s body being carried, almost as if he was still alive, down the mountain on the back of another man. Gorman also shivered at the thought that he had casually smoked Abdullah’s remaining cigarettes while waiting for his burial. Is it okay to take a dead man’s smokes?

There were other memories which haunted him for years: non-stop Soviet helicopter attacks, the threat of being betrayed by informers, or having to hide in a tomb-like cavity under the floorboards of a safe-house in Kabul for fear of being discovered by KHAD, Afghanistan’s equivalent of the KGB, as they searched for resistance collaborators. Being captured even as a reporter for The Times could have meant summary execution as a spy or at least prison with a very public propaganda trial.

For years, Gorman thought that he was suffering from the effects of malaria, dysentery or one of the other Third World ailments with the familiar medical names that tend to affect travellers. He went into depression, drank, took drugs and sought solitude deep in the Irish countryside well away from other human beings. He also abandoned journalism. He eventually returned to reporting, in conflict zones such as Northern Ireland and Bosnia. But soon he recognized that he could no longer continue as before, particularly as a foreign correspondent. He did make a couple of return trips to Afghanistan, but then found it impossible to even contemplate covering that (still) ongoing war, today in its 39th year. Or any other war for that matter.

It took numerous medical tests and consultations for Gorman to understand that what he was enduring was in fact Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD affects aid workers, soldiers, firefighters, air or car crash victims and

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many others who have experienced shocking, terrifying or dangerous events. As Gorman writes, one day he froze at his desk. He called his editor on the phone for help and got the reply that this was not the time to ask for a raise. In the end, his editors grasped that something was seriously wrong.

Gorman’s doctors finally pinpointed the true nature of his illness. In America, where he had taken a break to ‘paint’ houses rather than work as a journalist, he was diagnosed with “Acute Nervous Exhaustion”. Later, back in London at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, he was told to “slow down and box clever”. Gorman writes: “For the first time, I had a clear diagnosis that made sense, even if I knew little about post-traumatic stress disorder and had never considered that it might be the key to my condition.”

Once Gorman was diagnosed with PTSD, the doctors finally gave him the care he needed. This included a spell at the same institution in England where kidnap victims from Beirut and other Middle East countries had been treated. At first, Gorman was embarrassed about entering a “mental hospital” which also turned out to be Europe’s oldest privately run psychiatric clinic. He thought of leaping out of the car and running back. But the process of “unburdening” himself was critical, even though Gorman feared exposing his own private thoughts to others. For some, the process can take weeks or months; for others years. For Gorman, it took six months for him to sort out his demons allowing a positive change to emerge.

As Gorman writes, he was finally able to return to a normal life, but not to covering war zones. Instead, he became The Times’ yachting correspondent – he had a lifelong passion for boats – and eventually became deputy

Ed Gorman (with helmet in the middle) with Afghan guerrillas. British cameraman and producer, Peter Jouvenal, stands on the right with his camera.

head of news. A journalist friend of his, he writes, was not so lucky. This man committed suicide with the help of drink and drugs at the age of 50.

PTSD is prevalent, too, among relief workers. Many international aid agencies, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins sans Frontières, now provide counselling and therapy for their personnel, particularly those operating in war zones, on their return to ‘civilization’. This is a crucial process. People need to talk about their experiences and to get it out of their system. But it was not always so.

During the early 1990s in Liberia with MSF, I was filming with French film-maker and writer Christophe de Ponfilly. There we realized that the entire medical team on the ground were traumatized. They had been in the war too long and had witnessed too many terrible things, dealing with countless victims who had endured incessant rape, brutalization and the execution of their friends and loved ones. The team leader was completely dysfunctional. We ended up telephoning Paris beseeching HQ to pull the team out, which it did. But it took years for MSF to introduce regular debriefings of personnel on their return to Europe. News organizations, thankfully, are today more aware of the problems than then.

Sadly, my friend Christophe committed suicide. He had his own reasons for depression, but part of his mental disarray, I am convinced, resulted from PTSD based on what he had experienced in places like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Mozambique and other war zones around the world.

Death of a Translator is brutally honest. It is also written in a straightforward readable style. It was,

Gorman later told me, a book that had to be written. As he saw it, putting it all down on paper was also part of his recovery process. The book is appealing, easy-going, even somewhat romantic. He acknowledges the importance of finally falling in love with the right woman, Jeanna, who knew how to deal with both his character and troubles.

Of course, writing this review, I wonder whether I myself have suffered, or still suffer, from a form of PTSD. Maybe. Like any ‘tough’ foreign correspondent I am adept at hiding what I really feel. I am not particularly proud of the fact that I go to extreme lengths to cover up my emotions, something which often does not bode well in a marriage. I know this is a weakness. On finishing Gorman’s book, I found myself silently promising to explore my own situation. Looking back, my own long treks in Afghanistan probably served as a psychological balm to what I had witnessed. What else do you do when you have to walk 16 hours a day? You think. You ponder. You undergo a spiritual cleansing.

This became harder in other wars, where there was no trekking or the possibility of ‘cleansing’ walks. How I miss those Afghan treks. Walks in the peaceful Swiss Alps are simply not comparable, however refreshing. But it is still hard for me to admit that something might be wrong.

Like old soldiers, we simply don’t talk about it. That is why I am grateful to Ed Gorman’s book. It might help more of us face up to the truth.

Edward Girardet is editor of Global Geneva. He has reported wars and humanitarian crises for more than 30 years.

Death of a Translator. By Ed Gorman. Published June, 2017 by Arcadia Books.

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UNBREAKABLE?

Recognizing Humanitarian Stress and Trauma BY

Kelly O’Donnell

“I used to think that I was kind of hardened to suffering and misery…You learn to deal with it and hold it at bay while you are working. Its when you’re alone that it creeps up on you.”

PAUL E. ARÈS, WATCHING FOR THE SIGNALS, IN SHARING THE FRONT LINE AND THE BACK HILLS (2002) DESPITE ITS UBIQUITOUS PRESENCE, whether in crisis zones such as Syria, Yemen or the Congo, or day-to-day existence in both the developing and industrialized worlds, trauma often remains largely unrecognized and untreated. It is the same in the humanitarian sector.

As a psychologist working for 30 years in the aid and humanitarian sectors, I have observed my own vulnerability – and that of others.

Stress, of course, is an entirely normal daily experience.

It can motivate us to develop new strengths and skills. I am reminded of the Peace Corps refrain: “This is the toughest job you will ever love.”

For humanitarians, ‘common stressors’ includes a wide array of conditions such as hazardous living environments, relationship or communication issues, family problems back home, lack of privacy, and frequent transitions. Other typical stress factors are lack of leisure activities, boredom, uncertainty about work contracts, or having to deal with health problems. Humanitarian operations and organizations, large or small, all encounter such stressors.

CUMULATIVE STRESS One of the most debilitating and often unrecognized types of stress in humanitarian work is ‘cumulative stress.

It results from the prolonged exposure to work and non-work stressors, and it is intensified when one feels unable to help.

In disasters and armed conflict, it can escalate quickly, exhausting your normal coping mechanisms. The physical symptoms can be overtiredness, diarrhea, constipation and headaches. Some emotional results are anxiety, frustration, guilt, and depression. Cognitive impacts can affect your job performance: forgetfulness or poor concentration. The results in personal relations may be feeling isolated, resentful or intolerant of others. One common result of incapacitating, cumulative stress is ‘burnout.’

Unhealthy behavioral changes include increased intakes of alcohol, caffeine, drugs, tobacco and addictions, as I have frequently observed. Some aid workers,

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for example, may drink coffee throughout the day and follow this with an extended “happy hour” into the night.

This is typically “socially-acceptable” yet it is a warning of unacknowledged and mismanaged cumulative stress.

Less discussed but deeply impactful are feeling challenges to one’s spirituality or core beliefs about God, humans, and life.

TRAUMATIC STRESS: FROM WAR ZONES TO NUCLEAR CATASTROPHES ‘Traumatic stress’ is caused by events that are shocking and emotionally overwhelming: the constant sniping targeting civilians in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, the deliberate shelling of crowded market places in Somalia by rival combatants, managing nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, or dealing with trapped earthquake victims in Haiti or Mexico. These stressors can and often do lead to more serious psychological difficulties. Some of these emerge relatively promptly; but delayed expression can also appear years later.

For some, their responses to major stressors can be mild and manageable, as was the case of a team I helped debrief who were held captive for weeks by a terrorist group. For others the impact can be extremely strong, even disabling. In one incident, Médecins sans Frontières in West Africa had to pull out an entire team because of severe psychological stress brought about by dealing non-stop with brutally savaged victims of violence, including women who had been repeatedly raped.

PTSD ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ (PTSD) can occur after exposure to extreme stressors (including ongoing or intermittent exposure) where there is the threat to oneself or others of death, serious injury or violence. It is accompanied by intense fear and feelings of helplessness, with distressing recollections, dreams or flashbacks along with hyper-vigilance and avoidance of anything that reminds one of the stressor. These symptoms usually occur within

A group of pediatricians attend a baby in Maiwut, South Sudan. The baby, admitted with pneumonia would later die when the hostpial generator failed. [PHOTO ICRC]

one month of experiencing the traumatic event, although ‘delayed expression’ of symptoms can also occur. These can include depression, anxiety, grief, and substance abuse.

WHAT TO DO? RECOGNIZING VULNERABILITIES AND RESOURCES 1. Share the responsibility. Managing stress and trauma are not just personal responsibilities.

Humanitarian organizations must also accept some major responsibilities, not the least of which are recognizing and treating stress and trauma, ensuring healthy organizational practices, and integrating stress management throughout all phases of humanitarian involvement.

2. Model health. In some humanitarian settings, the worst stressors have to do with the culture of the organization and management style rather than security risks or lifestyle demands. Hence field leaders and managers can support their teams through more effective leadership styles, management practices, and their own behaviour.

3. Defuse stigma. Humanitarian workers can be reluctant to seek help. Both during deployments or even long afterwards, there may be a realistic fear that they will be seen as weak and inadequate for redeployment or promotion. Consequently they can often disconnect from their feelings and help perpetuate the “be-tough culture” that permeates the humanitarian sector.

4. Cultivate your resilience in five areas: character strengths such as perseverance and integrity; coping skills for stress management, self-care,

work-life balance, and interpersonal relationships; mutual support for colleagues, friends and family; staff support and wellbeing resources in one’s organization; and a transcendent sense of purpose, meaning, and hope.

5. Stay aware, get help, and grow. Humanitarians are not unbreakable. So don’t overestimate your immunity; but don’t underestimate your resilience.

Stay in touch with the stressors in your life and their cumulative and possible delayed impacts. If you get stuck from stress or trauma, get help. There are effective treatments for trauma, including exposure, cognitive behavioral, and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapies. Find safe places, people and ways to help you grow through the challenges of humanitarian life—and beyond.

This article is adapted from Module One by the author, in Confronting Stress and Trauma: A Resource Kit for Personnel Dealing with Violent Conflicts and Natural Disasters (2017), University of Worcester in association with UNITAR, Geneva (http://www.gist-t.org/). Used by permission. The descriptions of the different types of stressors is largely based on Managing Stress in the Field (IFRC, 2009).The opening quote is one of the over 60 humanitarian, peacekeeper, and journalist “Voices” included in Yael Danieli’s edited book, Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills (2002, pp. 115-120).

Kelly O’Donnell is a consulting psychologist based in Geneva and the CEO of Member Care Associates. His professional emphases include staff well-being, global mental health, and integrity/ anti-corruption. He is a representative to the United Nations in Geneva and New York for the World Federation for Mental Health.

MCAresources@gmail.com http://membercare.org/

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Humanitarian Ethics

[PHOTO ICRC]

Is it still possible to provide ethical humanitarian aid? Hugo Slim of the International Committee of the Red Cross explains why one cannot simply dismiss efforts to help people in crisis.

“Humanitarian ethics? Isn’t that an oxymoron these days? A contradiction in terms?” So said a rather jaded humanitarian worker to me a couple of years ago when I told her I was writing a book on the subject.

Humanitarian aid has boomed into a $27 billion sector in the last few years – up from around $5 billion at the beginning of the 21st century. Many people feel that a small, originally honest and voluntary pursuit which was built on compassion and good deeds has become a bloated self-serving industry, or even a business.

NOT SO ETHICAL A global humanitarian elite often lives in neo-colonial tax-free style in countries torn apart by long wars.

Humanitarian bureaucrats fly business class reading dense reports of human suffering, rising needs and funding gaps. Anthropologists call this parallel universe “Aidland”. It is a strange, detached expatriate community which exists alongside millions of people living and dying through the horrors of war – at once physically close and profoundly remote.

Then there are the politicians who some humanitarians blame for ruining their innately honourable profession.

Warring governments and armed groups are criticised for “instrumentalizing” humanitarian action by obstructing and diverting aid to enhance their various war aims. Rich

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(and usually western) donor governments who pay for humanitarian aid are accused of allocating it in line with geopolitical interest more than need. These states apparently favour humanitarian investment in armed conflicts in which they have a direct stake, or in parts of the world they want to “contain” or prevent migration.

NOT THE WHOLE STORY It is this essentially unethical account of humanitarian action that my relief aid sceptic probably had in mind. But I wrote the book anyway because this pessimistic viewpoint is not the whole truth, and because the ancient practice of reaching out to help people at risk of death is a universal ethical intuition and endeavour. Modern, industrial and bureaucratic humanitarian action is inevitably messy and imperfect. Like most developed welfare systems its reach is incomplete, its targeting hardly not full-proof, and it can create perverse incentives or be manipulated by giver and receiver alike. But this does not make it unethical. It may just mean it is difficult.

Humanitarian action is grounded in clear ethical foundations. The principle of humanity aims “to prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found and to protect life, health and respect for the human being.” This affirms something that we all know from being alive ourselves: that human life is precious. It is right to protect it when we can.

[PHOTO ICRC]

Millions of people – in war-torn communities, humanitarian organizations and governments – engage in humanitarian action with deep conviction. Thousands have been killed as they do so. These people face real moral problems which should not be cynically dismissed.

What happens if food distributions have negative effects by attracting violent raids? Who should you help when you don’t have enough medicines for everyone? If you support people fleeing and leaving their homes, are you facilitating ethnic cleansing? Should you cooperate with governments and armed groups you know to be murderous and cruel if they have the power to get aid through? Is this complicity or pragmatism, or a bit of both? Is public silence in the face of atrocities immoral or wise for a humanitarian organization working on the ground?

There are genuinely difficult policy questions, too, around what constitutes humanitarian aid. What is the right kind of programming in protracted conflicts which last for decades? Is it enough just to keep meeting people’s immediate survival needs by giving them food, water and clothing?

Perhaps humanitarian action should do more to help keep people alive and offer a life with much more dignity.

This means investing deeply in the maintenance and resilience of basic services like water and electricity infrastructure, health systems and hospitals. Keeping things going, not just dishing things out, may be more ethical.

Today, it is now increasingly recognized that protecting education and keeping children in school is a humanitarian act which meets a basic need and prevents even greater risks to a deterioration in a child’s long-term life chances. Ethical ideas evolve. It is also morally obvious

that people should be given more control over the humanitarian programmes that seek to help them. Humanitarian funding and practice should be “localized” much more.

But, not perhaps if localization risks aid flows being captured by people who have taken sides and may think their enemies do not deserve food, water and healthcare, and should be punished more than helped.

AN ETHICS OF STRUGGLE If protecting people and saving lives is good, then it is a struggle that must start anew in every war. Carefully thinking about humanitarian ethics is important in all aid operations. It is a better way to engage than telling grand narratives of the corruption and co-option of humanitarian action, and lamenting that the sector is now morally depraved.

There has never been a golden age of humanitarian action when warring parties found it easy to accept outside relief. Aid has usually been obstructed and contested in one way or another. War is hell and it is unrealistic to think that humanitarian action can be perfectly delivered with all its principles and best practices neatly aligned. In places like Syria, Yemen, Nigeria and South Sudan, humanitarian workers must focus on achieving what is possible and what is best in routinely terrible circumstances. This is what the people they are trying to help are doing. It is what humanitarians should do too.

Dr Hugo Slim is the author of Humanitarian Ethics: The Morality of Aid in War and Disasters published by Hurst and Oxford University Press. He is also Head of Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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BOOK REVIEWS This year’s 8th Morges Literary Festival (Livres sur les Quais) held in early September along the shores of Lake Geneva brought together some 280 international French and English-writing authors. The quality amongst the English-language authors was exceptionally high but Global Geneva has opted to focus on two specific groups, notably those writing about Switzerland and those exploring exile, migration and refugee issues. All have produced intriguing if not thought-provoking books that belong on your night table or in your Kindle. The Editors

THE SWISS BOOKS

Even if you don’t live or work in Switzerland, the three authors – Diccon Bewes, Clare O’Dea and Padraig Rooney – have produced books that offer unusual insights not only into the Swiss way of life but also the country’s pragmatic impact if not influence on other parts of the world. At the Morges Festival, all three writers commented on Britain’s inability to grasp how to hold a credible referendum and why extricating oneself from the single European market is sheer and utter madness, particularly if the Swiss example depicts one way on how to remain part of Europe.

CLARE O’DEA THE NAKED SWISS: A NATION BEHIND 10 MYTHS As an Irish journalist and a recently naturalised Swiss, Clare O’Dea provides a critical but factually-reported and relatively sympathetic view of who the Swiss really are in the 21st century. It will probably surprise many to learn 64

that, despite all the clichés of the Swiss disliking foreigners, they are actually a highly immigrant society – and have always been historically since Celtic and Roman times – with nearly 25 percent of residents foreign-born. Furthermore, at least one in four Swiss has a foreign grandparent and those who opt to naturalize often tend to become more Swiss than the Swiss. They take their new heritage very seriously.

O’Dea explores – and debunks or at least places into more realistic contexts – various themes, such as “the Swiss are rich”, “brilliant” or have the “perfect democracy”. She also examines how Swiss live with their perception of the role of women, neutrality, the military, or bilateralism with the European Union.

When some of the Brexiteers have pointed to Switzerland as a possible model (Switzerland is part of Schengen but not of the EU), they fail to take into account that there is only one problem with this approach, notably that the Swiss are pragmatic, and the British are not like the Swiss. The Swiss, even if they did vote against foreigners in the last referendum on limiting migration three years ago, she says, always seem to quietly work out matters. And usually, in a manner that is advantageous to them.

DICCON BEWES HOW TO BE SWISS: AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL & AROUND SWITZERLAND IN 80 MAPS An Englishman who has lived and travelled in Switzerland for years, Diccon Bewes writes as an outsider, but also, like O’Dea, with a realistic but sympathetic as well as humorous view. He might be said to have arrived at the Morges festival in overkill mode. Two books, indeed. But then he is a highly prolific writer.

How to be Swiss is a joint book produced by Bewes and Swiss artist Michael Meister. A combination of

tongue-in-cheek observations with a mix of graphics and caricature drawings

by Meister, addresses the day-to-day challenges of living or travelling in Switzerland, such as: “The first step to Helvetic heaven is often the toughest: how to greet the Swiss when you meet them. Once you’ve passed that test, the next takes you back in time through the history every Swiss knows (or should do)…” He then proceeds to take you through various steps such as “Living like the Swiss” or “The (12) Swiss commandments” with commands such as thou shalt “honour the national sausage known as Cervelat” (4th) or “speak in four tongues” (8th).

Bewes’ other book is an extraordinary piece of work. Delving back into history, he takes us on a journey through time and space starting with the first known map of Switzerland. Hand-painted or computer-generated, medieval or modern, urban or rural, all the maps have one thing in common: Switzerland. Initially, too, these maps were south to north before Mercator’s formalizing of maps from north to south. They also have different themes such as Town and Country, War and Peace, People and Power and Fantasy Switzerland. The book, which is published in hardcover English, French and German editions, is expensive ($51.13 on Amazon and 69.00 CHF in most Swiss bookshops), but certainly worth it.

PADRAIG ROONEY THE GILDED CHALET – OFF-PISTE IN LITERARY SWITZERLAND Another Irish author, Padraig Rooney, also works as both a teacher and travel writer.

He is clearly fascinated by Switzerland’s expatriate literary heritage, notably exploring how and why writers and poets ranging from Byron, Percy Shelley and Conan Doyle to Somerset Maugham, Mark Twain, Vladimir Nabokov, John Le Carré, Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith

but also Hermann Hesse and Erich Maria Remarque, came to Switzerland either as travellers, residents, patients or hedonists. All had their fascination – or disdain – for this country, whether as a haven to live, work, escape, recuperate, travel, but also to inhale the mountain air and to savour its wines and stunning landscapes. As Rooney notes, the ‘gilded chalet’ took them all in.

Rooney takes you through contemporary Switzerland pointing out the literati cafes, luxury hotels or scenic villages (Davos, Gstaad, Les Avants…) which James Joyce (Ulysses), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and Thomas Mann (Magic Mountain) used to frequent, including the psychiatric clinic in Prangins where Scott Fitzgerald placed his deranged wife Zelda. An enjoyable and highly informative read, and certainly another way to explore Switzerland.

massacred on 29 June 1996 in one of the regime’s most horrendous mass killings.

By discovering the truth and exploring the issues that surround the existence of an expatriate, the author – now living in London – thought that his journey would release him from the uncertainties of his own life. The book reads like a novel, but also helps throw light on the nature of the Gaddafi period.

THE EXILE BOOKS

These three books, two factual, one fiction,

by Hisham Matar, Melissa Fleming and Jason Donald all deal with the refugee, migration and exile experience. At the Morges festival, each author read a short extract from their books, each powerfully evocative. Based on conversations with the audience afterwards, most who had not read them were prepared to rush off and buy copies immediately.

Each of these three renderings are important contributions for grasping what it means to be forced to leave your home because of war, political repression and other forms of abuse, such as rape.

One of the messages is that no matter who we are, and where we live, we could all end up in similar situations. All three books should also be must-reads for high school students. They would certainly help them better understand what is happening in our world such as Libya and Syria, but also why so many refugees and migrants have fled to Europe.

HISHAM MATAR THE RETURN – FATHERS, SONS AND THE LAND IN BETWEEN Written from a very personal point of view, this 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography is based on the author’s return to his native Libya following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime. The purpose is to investigate the fate of his father, Jabala Matar, a businessman and former diplomat, but also political opponent, who had been kidnapped and then jailed in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison by the Libyan dictator’s henchmen. Matar still hoped to find his father alive but later learned that he was one of 1,270 prisoners

MELISSA FLEMING A HOPE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE SEA – THE JOURNEY OF DOAA AL ZAMED As spokesperson of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, Melissa Fleming has sought to tell this harrowing story to help us better grasp what it means to be a refugee in the 21st century. (Not that it seems any different from being a refugee in the 1970s, 80s or 90s.)

Focusing on the experience of Doaa Al Zamed, a very ‘ordinary’ Syrian woman, Fleming describes the life that she used to lead with her family – dinners outside on the roof or drinking tea with friends – before being forced to flee to Egypt because of the disintegrating political situation and conflict in Syria. When Egyptian exile becomes untenable, Zamed and her husband risk – as with thousands of others – the sea route across the Mediterranean to Europe. They are aware of the possible consequences, but they still do it.

Tragically, their boat carrying 500 refugees is attacked and left to capsize. Almost all the passengers, including her husband, drown. Zamed – one of 11 survivors – is rescued four days later, struggling to keep afloat in the water and clasping two baby girls, only one of whom lives.

As someone who works with refugees on a daily basis, Fleming knows that the harsh realities of human statistics published in news reports – numbers of people fleeing, refugee camp populations, visas granted or tons of emergency relief dispatched – rarely convey the true plight of the refugee. Often a single, highly personal story tells it best. The fact that such nightmares are happening in Europe, or at least on the doorsteps of Europe, makes a marked difference. So does the fact that many of us, particularly those who have vacationed on the Greek or Italian islands where the bulk of these Mediterranean boat people land, can imagine at least part of the context.

A Hope More Powerful than the Sea is – or will be – published in over a dozen languages. The film rights also have been purchased. Not unlike The Killing Fields, both a book and a movie which helped put the horrors of the Cambodian holocaust on western radars, Fleming’s may do the same for refugees.

JASON DONALD DALIA In another form of refugee experience, Jason Donald writes in the form of novel based on well-researched, on-the-ground realities. Now based in Switzerland, Donald is a Scottish-born writer who was brought up in South Africa. So he has always had an affinity with Africa.

With Dalila, Donald has sought to portray the plight of a Kenyan woman forced to flee illegally to the United Kingdom not because of political persecution – as Donald points out, this is usually the sort of justification that asylum seekers use – but because of rape and violence. Like many seeking refuge in the UK, Dalila arrives at Heathrow airport with the help of professional traffickers. Given temporary visa she embarks on a harsh new life. Nothing is easy. Bureaucracy, abuse, manipulators – all reminders of a cold inhumanity.

Despite all this, there are still touches of tenderness and personal warmth.

For Jason Donald, the point of Dalila, which is written like a page-turning thriller, is to provide an insight into what is happening in the world of asylum seekers: interminable waiting, uncertainty and torments of memory that face those in search of a new start. At the Morges Festival, Donald said that he knew little about apartheid when brought up as a white boy in South Africa.

Researching this book made him go beyond the ‘unknowing’, by investigating the desperation that happens behind the scenes. This is a remarkably written and evocative book.

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TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES

A Swiss Makes an Artistic Splash in the City of Brotherly Love

As one of revolutionary America’s first capitals as well as the gathering place for its Founding Fathers leading to the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, Philadelphia is increasingly emerging as a leading economic and cultural hub for the East coast. It also remains a traditional diplomatic focal point with 48 consular representations, including Switzerland. America editor William Dowell explores the extraordinary role of Christine Pfister, Berne’s honorary consul, who is helping to change the city’s global artistic profile.

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CHRISTINE PFISTER WAS MANAGING THE ZERMATT office for a family-owned company building prefabricated mountain chalets, when she decided that it was time to take a six-month sabbatical and travel around the United States to study English. “I guess that I spent more time traveling than studying,” she says. Today, Pfister is Switzerland’s honorary consul in Philadephia and the director of Pentimenti, one of the city’s most respected galleries focusing on emerging contemporary art. Her clients range from local art fanatics to collectors in Switzerland, Paris and the Middle East to the far flung reaches of the planet. She has done a number of exchange programs with museums and galleries in Switzerland, and she is a leading presence in some of America’s most important contemporary art fairs. Her next project is the upcoming Art Fair in Abu Dhabi, which will coincide with the opening of the Louvre’s satellite museum in the emirate.

Roughly half her artists are local. The other half are from distant locations ranging from Iran and Tel Aviv to South America. “One of my collectors lives in Kuwait,” she explains. “I have never met him in person, but his brother, who lives in Houston, Texas, came through Philadelphia and was fascinated by one of my artists. When his brother in Kuwait came to visit in Houston, he saw the work and became just as passionate about it. I’ve now sold him several pieces.”

Pfister’s career and her success at a time when many art galleries are threatened with closing, happened almost by chance. She had been going to school in San Francisco and traveled around most of the Western United States, including Hawaii, when a friend suggested taking a trip to Philadelphia. The friend wanted her to meet another Swiss friend, Tom Pfister, who was engaged in marketing for the leading German software company, SAP, which at the time had a headquarters in Switzerland.

A CRASH COURSE IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART SAP had only one American client, but it was a big one: the multinational science and engineering giant, DuPont.

DuPont demanded that if SAP wanted its business, it would have to post someone to the US to meet its needs.

Tom Pfister had signed on for a three-year tour in 1991.

It turned out that Pfister had interests that went beyond business. While studying marketing in Geneva, he had developed a passion for art and enrolled in night classes to study drawing and painting. Landing in Philadelphia, with only one client, he had an urge to expand his horizons. A friend, who had studied at the auction house Christies, suggested that he take over a vacant storefront in Philadelphia’s Old City, and open a gallery. It would be a great way of inserting himself into the creative community.

After Tom and Christine met in 1992, they engaged in a long-distance courtship and were finally married in 1995. By then, Tom’s business demands had become too overwhelming to continue running the gallery himself.

Tom suggested that Christine could either look for a job on her own, or, an option would be to take over the gallery.

“I didn’t know if it was what I really wanted,” she says, “So

I decided to do it in stages. I started by spending several weeks watching the director. I went along on visits to artists’ studios and paid attention to how the gallery’s director made decisions and how she related to collectors.

In the end, I decided that it was an amazing environment, but I realized that I needed to have an education in art.”

She took a crash course on modern and contemporary art at Christies in New York, which meant a daily hour-anda-half commute by train. “I wanted to know how to look at art,” she says. Studying at Christies also provided a chance to be in direct contact with the work that private collectors were putting up for auction. More important, it offered a chance to meet collectors and to understand the psychology behind their obsession with art.

ART BASEL: MAKING ART FAIRS ARE SUCCESSFUL When she finally took over Pentimenti, she had a broad vision of the latest trends in new and emerging art. The focus became more specific as she gathered experience.

She was particularly interested in emerging artists.

“When you go to Art Basel, which is the major reason that Art fairs are so successful,” she says, “you see artists who are already established in their careers. What I am interested in is the artists who have not yet reached that point.

I enjoy working with the artists, and at times helping them to go ahead with a project that they might not have finished because they didn’t have the financing or enough support.”

Christine says that the qualities she looks for in an artist are passion and consistency in developing an idea or concept. “I care very much about passion,” she says, “and the craftsmanship of the artist.”

The major art market remains New York, but Christine sees advantages to being in Philadelphia which is rapidly regaining its former allure. “By not being in New York, I miss out on art tourism,” she says. “but that is not really important when collectors know who you are. When they are interested in an artist, they will take the time to find you.” In fact, New York is only two hours away, and a growing number of artists are leaving New York for Phildelphia where rents are less expensive and daily life is less stressful.

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LETTER FROM PHILADELPHIA | A SWISS MAKES AN ARTISTIC SPLASH IN THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE

Christine and Tom Pfister at Pentimenti [PHOTO: WILLIAM DOWELL]

THE INTERNET HAS BROADENED THE ART VIEW OF THE WORLD When Christine first began running Pentimenti on her own, she found that organizing exhibitions was a slow, labor intensive process. “Most artists did not have websites,” she explains. Art work had to be photographed on slides and projected on a wall. She had to design, print and send invitations to new openings by mail. In just five years, everything exploded and with the internet the business moves at light speed. Today, if a collector in another country wants to see an artist’s latest work, a sample image can immediately be sent by email. “The internet has broadened everyone’s view of the world,” Christine says. The key element in the equation is that the collector trusts the judgment of the gallery owner. “It really doesn’t matter where you are based these days,” she says. “What does matter is confidence that collectors have in the gallery.”

SWITZERLAND: PHILADELPHIA’S SIXTH MOST IMPORTANT INVESTOR Tom Pfister originally had a three-year visa to work in the US. When the time was up, SAP asked him to stay, enabling

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him to secure him a resident Green Card. He eventually left SAP to start his own international marketing company, Match Code, and only recently started a second company, Nitro Marketing. In 2011, the Swiss government asked Christine Pfister to become its honorary consul in Philadelphia. She subsequently joined the board of directors of the Consular Corps, which represents the honorary consuls of 35 countries in the city that served as America’s original capital. She recently resigned from those duties in order to have more time to spend on other projects.

As honorary consul she has increasingly focused on creating links between Swiss and American business.

Switzerland is currently the sixth most important investor in the state of Pennsylvania, and Swiss companies account for more than 27,000 jobs. As for the Pentimenti Gallery Link: http://www.pentimentigallery.com/ , it recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. “Last year was our best year ever,” Christine says, “and the first half of this year has already surpassed last year. It keeps getting better and better.”

A former foreign correspondent based in Europe, including Geneva, Africa and Asia, William Dowell is Global Geneva’s America editor based in Philadelphia.

“Trauma is a fact of life, but it does not have to be a life sentence” Peter Levine

Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people suffer the consequences of traumatic experiences.

Trauma can devastate their lives, ruin their families and communities, and be a driver of violence (‘hurt people hurt people’).

© Shehzad Noorani

The Global Initiative for Stress and Trauma Treatment (GIST-T) has recently been established in the Geneva area. We envision a world in which new, effective trauma treatments are available to all traumatized people.

Find out what we are currently doing: • • • • •

Lobbying to create an International Trauma Awareness Day Organizing a conference on how to deploy paraprofessional trauma workers using simplified treatment protocols Conducting trauma audits for humanitarian organizations Developing an online e-learning course for better stress and trauma self- care Supporting several trauma projects around the world

For more information: Contact@gist-t.org, or visit our website: www.gist-t.org or follow us on www.facebook.com/gistt.org Healing Trauma, Healing Humanity

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FROM THE FIELD

MIKE DUBOSE:

A photojournalist’s journey

As with day-to-day print and broadcast journalism, it is becoming increasingly difficult for photographers to earn a living in a manner that enables them not only to embrace their professional aspirations but also to serve the public interest.

Traditional media, notably local newspapers, magazines and even major news agencies, are cutting back. This is leaving fewer dedicated photographers with the means to properly explore day-to-day life, or to cover crucial issues, such as wars and humanitarian crises. While social media are indeed offering new opportunities, many photographers are exploring other avenues to help provide the sort of support that the great journalistic media, such as Magnum, TIME, Paris Match, Stern and even National Geographic used to provide.

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FOR AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER MIKE DUBOSE, a former news agency and newspaper staffer, who was inspired by his father, an amateur photographer, this is the journey that he has taken to provide the quality journalism that he believes is crucial for us to better understand the world around us. “My father was always very supportive of my career decisions, even as I struggled to find full-time employment as a photojournalist,” Dubose recalls.

For nearly 12 years now, he has been working for the United Methodist Communications based in Nashville, Tennessee, a church-based organization that has allowed him to travel Africa and other parts of the world to pursue the work he loves. “Working as a daily newspaper photographer was one of the most challenging and rewarding

For DuBose, an informed public is vital to our society with newspapers serving as the foundation of this knowledge. His first reporting job was at a ScrippsHoward paper. “I think their motto is more important today than ever before, notably: “Give light and the people will find their own way.” Despite his passion for being a news photographer, he found himself becoming disillusioned with the newspaper business. This was one of the reasons that he decided to work for the United Methodists,

things I’ve ever done,” Dubose explains. “Every day was a clean slate. If you screwed up yesterday, today’s your chance to do better. And if you had a great day, that’s fine, ‘but what have you got for tomorrow’s paper?’ There’s nothing like starting your work day not knowing where it might take you and what skills you’ll have to call on to get the job done.”

As DuBose puts it, daily photojournalism is all about witnessing the diversity of life in your community. You have to be comfortable in your own skin and be able to move in and out of people’s lives in a way that allows you access to their best and worst days. “As a photographer, I have always tried to give an honest look at the world around me and I enjoyed taking our readers to new places or giving them a fresh view of the familiar.”

At the same time, he notes, newspaper photojournalism does not allow much introspection.

It puts a premium on the ‘quick read.’ “A good news photo makes its point quickly with minimal support from the caption,” DuBose says. There were some great “photo papers” that encouraged longer-form projects with room for pictures that would make the readers think. “But most of time, we were after a strong, single image to tell the story.”

a church group extremely active in the United States but also Africa. “After 10 years I felt like I hadn’t really accomplished anything lasting. And I realized that my standing in the newsroom would always be subordinate to all but the newest reporters,” he says.

Despite being raised in the church, both DuBose and his wife, as with many young people, had fallen out of the habit of attending regularly until their first child was born.

They began going again for a few months and it was then that he came across a UAM ad seeking a photojournalist.

“I went to speak with my pastor about it. Though he didn’t know me well, he took a chance on me and helped me get an interview,” he says. “I hadn’t actually intended to look for a new job, but the opportunity to build a photography ministry from scratch and to capture some photos with a real purpose pulled me in.” Working with UMC now enables DuBose – almost to the point of luxury of time and travel – when compared to newspaper reporting – to engage in the sort of photography that he believes allows him to put across the real nature of people and the situations in which they live. “While I have my assignments for UMC, I can head out on my own – or with the people I am travelling – and explore, move around and do what I believe is necessary for my work. It is very satisfying.”

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FROM PREVIOUS PAGES [LEFT] United Methodist schoolteacher Assani Tshomba Lebien welcomes visitors to Abanga, Democratic Republic of Congo.

[MIDDLE] The Rev. Will Green lies on the floor of the 2016 United Methodist General Conference in Portland, Ore., with his hands and feet bound to protest the denomination’s policies on human sexuality. Delegates returning from their lunch break passed by protestors on the floor and lining the entryway to the meeting area.

[RIGHT] Children crowd a window to see inside Nazareth United Methodist Church in Kindu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

THIS PAGE [ABOVE] Earl Wollitt (right, foreground) casts his eyes upward during worship at Seashore Mission United Methodist Church in Biloxi, Miss. “God put us in this building in this location for a reason.

We are in a perfect place to do what we do—feed the body and the soul,” said Judy Longo, United Methodist local pastor and director of Seashore Mission.

[BELOW] Midwife Marie Manga Dikoma uses a Pinard horn to listen to the heartbeat of Cecile Iatu’s unborn baby at The United Methodist Church’s Irambo Health Center in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo

While DuBose considers newspaper photography to still be “an honorable profession”, the days of being able to hone your craft for a few years on a smaller paper and then move up are pretty much over. The business is changing – and rapidly. It has become a tough time to be a professional photographer. “Most of us are now bombarded with imagery every day, but much doesn’t have that much to say. Nevertheless, we consume a steady diet of photos. This proliferation of images, coupled with new cameras that have removed the technical barriers to

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properly exposed, sharply focused photos has decreased the value society places on photography. At the same time, I I feel there will always be a need for visual interpretation of the world around us.”

Mike is currently working on an assignment to help illustrate the importance of access to clean water for work.

Last year, as part of a personal project, he walked with a group of Mexican religious pilgrims to venerate the Virgin of Juquila in Oaxaca state in Mexico. The Editors

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

PRINCE SADRUDDIN AGA KHAN:

Humanitarian & Visionary Written by a former collaborator of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan when he was the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, this provides a highly revealing insight into a man of distinction who was not just a humanitarian but also a dynamic visionary and accomplished artist (he was also a specialist in Islamic art) in the world of environment, culture and global diplomacy.

FOR DIANA MISEREZ, SADRUDDIN, WHO WAS BORN in Paris and died at the age of 70 in 2003, was a kind, perceptive and easily accessible man who took time to develop relations with ordinary people. As part of a remarkable international career, he served in many capacities following his 12 years as High Commissioner.

These included difficult missions to the Middle East, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which demonstrated his diplomatic genius and operational gifts.

Prompted by his love for mountains and nature, Sadruddin created his own think-tank, the Bellerive Foundation in Geneva, for which he recruited other exceptional people, such as Staffan de Mistura, currently UN’s chief negotiator for the Syria talks. He also launched Alp Action, which involved both the public and private sectors in supporting projects aimed at protecting mountain regions. This landmark initiative sadly went into abeyance when Sadruddin died, but should be revived as one of the most successful international Alpine initiatives bringing together people, nature, culture and business.

Sadruddin also roped in Michael Keating, now the UN’s Special Representative to Somalia, who helped spearhead the Operation Salam, an unusual peace endeavour launched by the Prince toward the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1980s, which enabled the UN to work – almost uniquely - on both sides of the conflict.

In Keating’s words: “Sadruddin introduced me to the world of international affairs in a way that no-one else possibly could. He hired me as his Special Assistant when I was in my mid-twenties, and installed me in a converted attic in his elegant offices near the Old Town in Geneva. He was unbelievably well connected at the highest levels on all continents, north and south, on an astounding range of issues, including conservation, animal rights and environmental protection, cultural heritage and fine arts, refugees and humanitarian law, food security and green economics, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, religious tolerance, racism and identity politics, multilateralism and UN reform - to name a few.

“His views on all these subjects were rarely conventional, always deeply held and, as it turned out, way ahead of their time. He had exacting standards, great attention

to detail and high expectations of me - including the terrifying assumption that I was familiar, or would be able to make myself familiar, with all these issues so as to be useful to him. I survived because association with him opened doors and because of his willingness to share knowledge. I was very privileged to have such an induction, and still bump into people all over the world who tell me how much they valued meeting him and were influenced by him.”

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan: Humanitarian and Visionary.

By Diana Miserez. Published by Book Guild Ltd, UK.

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PHOTOS BY LAYLA ALYANAK

TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES

CONFESSIONS OF AN UNREPENTANT FOODIE:

The City with the

Best Food in the World BY

WHAT IF SOMEONE TOLD YOU the best food in the world was to be found in Lyon, just two hours from Geneva?

Before you start flinging dissenting arrows and lining up your arguments, consider the source: the famed Curnonsky, France’s food critic and gourmand, who dubbed Lyon the ‘world capital of gastronomy’ back in 1935. In a country whose fussiness about food is legendary, these words weigh heavily.

Foodies flock to Lyon from every corner of the planet to dip their forks into the legendary recipes of Paul Bocuse, known as the ‘Pope of French cuisine’ (and also known, for better or worse, as the gentleman responsible for introducing nouvelle cuisine to the world).

Visitors vie to fill up the city’s bouchons, those cozy restaurants often passed down through generations and whose hearty dishes are the antithesis of Bocuse’s refined lightness. Food lovers will queue for renowned cheese merchants, chocolate makers and pastry chefs. Lyon, after all, does have numbers on its side: it has the most restaurants per capita in France, 18 of them boasting at least one prestigious Michelin star.

You can hardly walk more than a meter or two without bumping into something to eat, usually sublime, but with a few dubious encounters thrown in as fast food makes inroads.

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Leyla Alyanak

UNDER A SINGLE ROOF You could spend an entire year trying several specialties a day and still not manage to sample the full spectrum of cuisine lyonnaise.

Or you could do it in a day, without even leaving the building. That building would be the Halles Paul Bocuse, a covered market tending more towards Ali Baba’s culinary cave than produce stall, to be found a comfortable ten-minute stroll from Lyon’s main Part-Dieu train station.

Don’t be fooled by the unprepossessing glass front and warehouse interior. With a name like Bocuse, the pressure to excel is brutal. Let your attention wander to Sève’s rainbow-hued pastries, so bright you’d be accused of excessive saturation if this were a photograph. Or gaze guiltily at rows of pastel macarons, lined up like soldiers on parade and ranging in flavours from rose and violet to… foie gras.

Stroll down an alley to stare hungrily at the candied fruit at Bahadourian, the Armenian caterer and grocer whose downtown warehouses feel like Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar – not traditionally Lyonnais, but a fixture nonetheless.

Build your own cheese plate at Mons: they might suggest a cheese wheel, with the mildest first, followed by stronger and stronger cheeses to preserve your palate.

Soon you will come upon what I call Seafood Lane, with sea urchins so fresh you inhale rather than swallow their dainty red corals, and plump, garlicky escargots fat enough to keep slipping out of your tongs. As you work your way up and down the aisles, you might hear the cracking of shells, or follow your nostrils to a dish of fragrant andouillette, a tripe sausage usually clothed in creamy mustard sauce.

IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS This was once a traditional market, one of many, but delivery trucks found it hard to manoeuver along Old Lyon’s twisted streets until finally, in 1970, Les Halles moved to its present site in the suburbs, less charming perhaps but superbly convenient with the train nearby.

When Paul Bocuse allowed his name to be appended to the market in 2006, the stakes skyrocketed. Les Halles was already renowned but the gauntlet had been thrown down, nudging restaurateurs and producers to even greater heights. They now heaved under twin challenges: living up to Bocuse’s name as well as to Lyon’s gastronomic reputation, the latter compounded by UNESCO’s decision to add French gastronomy to the Intangible World Heritage List.

That gastronomy, while based on cuisine and conviviality, is not only the result of dexterity and flair. While most things at Les Halles may be cooked to perfection, Lyon also happens to sit amongst of some of the best culinary raw materials France has to offer – Alpine cheeses and freshwater fish, frogs’ legs from the Dombes, charolais beef, chestnuts from the Ardèche, chickens from the Bresse and Beaujolais wines.

SHALL WE KEEP IT A SECRET? The huge organized tour groups haven’t discovered Les Halles - yet - but they cannot be far away. Food tours are becoming popular in the city and the sight of bobbing coloured umbrellas fighting their way through packed

alleys is only a matter of time. But you don’t need a tour.

This is an adventure you can handle on your own. Just come early, bring your hunger and your cash, and arm yourself with a bit of French or be prepared to point.

IS LYON ONLY ABOUT FOOD? ABSOLUTELY NOT. To begin to know Lyon you must stand at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, amble along the twisted streets of the Vieux Lyon, climb Fourvière hill to discover its silk-weaving past or revisit the history of Rome’s grandeur in the city’s 10,000-seat amphitheater. But eventually, wherever you are in ‘the other Paris’, your stomach will growl and your nose will twitch, leading you down this lane or that street to an open-plan kitchen, some freshly baked bread or the wafting aroma of garlic.

No matter how many times you visit Lyon, you will eat yourself silly, whatever your best intentions. And if you happen to be taking the train back to Geneva, you’ll surreptitiously try to get to the station an hour early to drop by Les Halles for a box of macarons or a little tray of hors d’oeuvres to take home, willpower be damned.

Leyla Alyanak is a Contributing Editor of Global Geneva and writes about travel at: Women on the Road: www.women-on-the-road.com

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