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In the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East, new, autonomous weapons are being used. Our Inside Geneva podcast asks whether we’re losing the race to control them – and the artificial intelligence systems that run them.

“Autonomous weapons systems raise significant moral, ethical, and legal problems challenging human control over the use of force and handing over life-and-death decision-making to machines,” says Sai Bourothu, specialist in automated decision research with the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

How can we be sure an autonomous weapon will do what we humans originally intended? Who’s in control?

Jean-Marc Rickli from the Geneva Centre for Security Policy adds: “AI and machine learning basically lead to a situation where the machine is able to learn. And so now, if you talk to specialists, to scientists, they will tell you that it's a black box, we don't understand, it's very difficult to backtrack.”

Our listeners asked if an autonomous weapon could show empathy? Could it differentiate between a fighter and a child? Last year, an experiment asked patients to rate chatbot doctors versus human doctors.

“Medical chatbots ranked much better in the quality. But they also asked them to rank empathy. And on the empathy dimension they also ranked better. If that is the case, then you opened up a Pandora’s box that will be completely transformative for disinformation,” explains Rickli.

Are we going to lose our humanity because we think machines are not only more reliable, but also kinder?

“I think it's going to be an incredibly immense task to code something such as empathy. I think almost as close to the question of whether machines can love,” says Bourothu.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast to learn more about this topic.

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The world is marking 30 years since the Rwandan genocide. Inside Geneva talks to those who witnessed it.

“We came to one village where there were a few survivors and a man came to me with a list and said ‘look, the names have been crossed out one by one, entire families, they were killing everybody from those families,’” says Christopher Stokes, from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

Charles Petrie, former United Nations (UN) humanitarian coordinator, recalls: “She thought there was a good chance that the Interahamwe [militia] would find the kids, the children, and she said, ‘pray that they don’t hack them to death, pray that they shoot them’”.

Why was it not prevented?

“The paralysis of the UN system, the paralysis of all the major players to respond to what was pretty clearly a massive genocidal operation,” says Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister.

Senior diplomats worked to make the UN stronger in the face of atrocities.

“Instead of talking about the right to intervene, we talked about the responsibility to protect. There are some kinds of behaviour which are just inconceivably beyond the pale, whatever country we live in, and just do demand this response,” says Evans.

Has “responsibility to protect”, or R2P, worked?

“I don’t think there’s been significant progress. I would say actually that we went from perhaps a hope, an illusion that something would be done to actually not expecting anything at all now,” says Stokes.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast.

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In Inside Geneva this week we get an eyewitness account of a mission to supply Gaza’s hospitals.

Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘People have told me oh you must be very brave for going to Gaza. I don’t think so, I think what’s brave is the people who have been doing this work since early October, and who go back every day, to do it again and again and again.’

Aid agencies say nowhere is safe in Gaza

Chris Black, World Health Organisation: ‘A woman with her young child saying to me, are we safe here? And I wanted to say to her ‘You’re in the grounds a hospital, this is a protected space, you should be safe here’. But I couldn’t say to her ‘you’re safe here.’’

And we hear from human rights defenders who have come to Geneva, hoping for support.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, human rights defender, Belarus: ‘I really believe that the democratic, powerful world will its teeth and will show to dictators that they will not prevail. We are not asking you to fight instead of us, we are asking you to help us fight the dictators.’

Are democracies letting human rights defenders in autocratic states down?

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

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In 2024, four billion of us can vote in elections. Can democracy survive artificial intelligence (AI)? Can the UN, or national governments, ensure the votes are fair?

“Propaganda has always been there since the Romans. Manipulation has always been there, or plain lies by not very ethical politicians have always been there. The problem now is that with the power of these technologies, the capacity for harm can be massive,” says Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for Social & Human Sciences & AI Ethics at UNESCO.

Analyst Daniel Warner continues: “I’m worried about who’s going to win. But I’m also worried about whether my vote will count, and I’m worried about all kinds of disinformation that we see out there now. More than I’ve ever seen before.”

Are deep fakes the biggest dangers? Or just not knowing what to believe?

“I think the problem is not going to be the content created, the problem is going to be the liar’s dividend. The thing that everything can be denied, and that anything can be questioned, and that people will not trust anything,” said Alberto Fernandez Gibaja, Head of Digitalisation and Democracy at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).

Laws to regulate AI are lagging behind the technology. So how can voters protect themselves?

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

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The UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, is the focus of major scrutiny after Israel claimed some UNRWA staff were involved in the October 7th attacks, and thousands more were members of Hamas, or supportive of it. Now one of two UN investigations has concluded that UNRWA does need to improve its measures to uphold the humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality, but that Israel has offered no supporting evidence for its claims that many UNRWA staff support Hamas. Many people around the world hadn’t really heard of UNRWA before this scandal - so what is it exactly, why was it founded, and does it really need to continue? Imogen Foulkes takes a deep dive, talking to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, Israeli diplomat Nina Ben-Ami, Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch.

Inside Geneva looks at what’s at stake.

For more stories on the international Geneva please visit www.swissinfo.ch/

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

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The war in Ukraine is two years old. Inside Geneva discusses the latest military developments in Ukraine, the chances of peace and where the war will go from here.

“Isn’t there a limit when there are so many civilian deaths so you as a state have a responsibility to stop?” asks journalist Gunilla van Hall.

How will this war end? Ukraine, with the West’s support, is fighting a regime that poisons, imprisons, and kills its political opponents.

Inside Geneva host Imogen Foulkes says: “Putin's dream of getting the whole country, if that's what he wanted, doesn't seem that achievable, and yet Ukraine getting its entire country back doesn't seem achievable either.”

What chance is there of a peace agreement? Does the United Nations have any role to play?

“With this particular cast of characters, it's not going to happen. With Putin on the one side and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and his entourage. They’re committed to victory whatever that is,” says Jussi Hanhimäki, professor of international history at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Is the West’s support for Ukraine waning? What could that mean for international stability?

“Russia is basically independent as far as acting in this war, whereas Ukraine is dependent. And I think of the question of Western fatigue and the radar now is on the Middle East,” concludes analyst Daniel Warner.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva podcast for the answers.

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It’s one year since devastating earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria. Inside Geneva talks to search and rescue teams who were there:

Filip Kirazov, from Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters (SARAID) says: “Every member of SARAID is a volunteer. So no one gets paid for any of the work we do. Our sole aim is to minimize human suffering, due to the impact of natural or manmade disasters.”

And to local business leaders who had tried to prepare for such a disaster.

“We were expecting a big earthquake in Istanbul, and we were calculating the number of people that were going to lose their lives, and the number of economic losses. The role of businesses there was to be prepared before, and help the economic recovery afterwards,” says Erhan Arslan, Turkonfed (Turkisn Enterprise and Business Confederation).

Can humanitarian organisations and business work together to respond? The United Nations (UN) have an initiative that tries to do just that.

Florian Rhiza Nery, Connecting Business Initiative says: “We often times see the challenges that come from the differences, between the business community, the private sector, and humanitarian organisations, not just the UN.”

Can it work? Humanitarians and entrepreneurs don’t always think the same way…

“When I hear about private public partnerships, I always say about in terms of the private ‘what’s in it for them?’ And the question of a private company being totally neutral or altruistic, I still have my doubts,” concludes Daniel Warner, political analyst.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva

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The International Court of Justice (the United Nations’ top court) is considering charges of genocide against Israel. The case was brought by South Africa.

Adila Hassim, the lawyer for South Africa, says: “Palestinians are subjected to relentless bombing. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches and as they try to find food and water for their families."

Israel is defending itself with vigour.

“What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy people but to protect people, its people. In these circumstances there can hardly be a charge more false and more malevolent than the accusation against Israel of genocide,” says Tal Becker, a lawyer for Israel.

Inside Geneva asks if this is really a case for the UN’s top court.

Margaret Satterthwaite, UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers: “This is a case about asserting humanity, and in fact asserting law over war. The purpose of the UN is to prevent disputes from turning into armed conflict. […] And the ICJ is there to help resolve disputes and to prevent war.”

Can that really work? Or will this high-profile case simply distract from other human rights violations?

“People feel like if you don't call it genocide then it's not serious and that's a mistake. Crimes against humanity are incredibly severe,” says Ken Roth of the Harvard Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy.

The ICJ’s final verdict will take years. There is no right of appeal, and member states are obliged to comply. But the ICJ has no power to enforce.

“There's not a UN police force running around making sure that states comply with their international law obligations,” concludes Satterthwaite.

Join host Imogen Foulkes on our Inside Geneva podcast to learn more about the case.

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