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Rachael Cummings of Save the Children is Inside Geneva’s summer profile this week.

“When I went into nursing, I also wanted to travel, so nursing gave me that opportunity. That was sort of an 18-year-old thinking, ‘Okay, I can use this to travel with’,” says Cummings.

Since taking her nursing skills to humanitarian work, she’s been all over the world.

“I think one of the things I’m most proud of is Save the Children’s role in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in 2014 and 2015. We were able to establish – literally build, together with our Sierra Leonean colleagues – an 80-bed Ebola hospital and everything that went with it.”

Now, she’s in Gaza, grappling with desperate shortages of aid.

“Nothing came in for months, and since mid-May the UN has only managed to bring in a trickle of humanitarian supplies. But in this context, people are being starved and are on the brink of famine. They’re absolutely desperate – some are jumping onto the trucks and pulling off the aid supplies. And I know I’d do the same,” she says.

Wherever she is, Cummings’s priority is always the children.

“We’re driven by humanity and the desire to alleviate the suffering of children, wherever they may be. It’s about giving them hope, because they’re living through the worst experiences imaginable, the most desperate of times, and of course, they’re entirely innocent. They’re children who have the right to a childhood.”

Join host Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva.

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• Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
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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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Inside Geneva brings you our second summer profile, with international lawyer Dapo Akande.

“I’m one of those boring people who actually always wanted to be a lawyer. I’m not sure exactly what the motivation was when I was younger, but I think I was very argumentative as a child. And everyone used to say, ‘You should be a lawyer,’” says Akande.

As a child in Nigeria, he also took a keen interest in world affairs.

“I was brought up in Nigeria and my parents had the BBC World Service on the whole time when I was growing up. So that engendered in me a big interest in world affairs. And when I saw that there was an area of law that actually dealt with international affairs, I thought, yes, that’s the bit I’m interested in.”

Once he’d qualified, he assisted on cases at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where he saw how the court peacefully resolved disputes between United Nations member states, including one between his native Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon.

“This source of real tension, which had occasionally led to flashpoints and the use of force between those two countries, was resolved on the basis of the judgment by the ICJ. I think that’s an amazing achievement and it’s made all the more amazing by the fact that we actually don’t know much about it. If there had been a war, we’d know all about it.”

Now, Akande is a candidate to be a judge on the ICJ – at a time, he believes, when international law is more important than ever.

“It’s clearly the case that, in far too many cases, international law is disregarded. I think that’s true. There are many instances where the law is not followed and you only have to turn on the news to see that. What I do know is that international law is increasingly seen as relevant, and actions today are judged more often by reference to international law than they were in the past.”

Join host Imogen Foulkes in conversation with Dapo Akande on Inside Geneva.

Get in touch!

• Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
• Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en

Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.

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

Send us a text

Get in touch!

• Email us at insidegeneva@swissinfo.ch
• Twitter: @ImogenFoulkes and @swissinfo_en

Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.

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