"A Yazidi woman's survival story" is episode 11 in the new GCSP Podcast Series. Dr Paul Vallet interviews Ms Adiba Qasim, Yazidi genocide survivor, asylum seeker and Young Leader in Foreign and Security Policy at the GCSP.

Dr Paul Vallet: Welcome to the Geneva Centre for Security Policy weekly podcast. I'm your host, Dr Paul Vallet, Associate Fellow in the GCSP Global Fellowship Initiative. For the next few weeks, I'm talking with subject matter experts to explain issues of peace, security and international cooperation. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. A few weeks from now, we'll be seeing an anniversary of an event that stunned the Middle East and the wider world, when jihadist fighters of ISIS overran Mosul and much of northern Iraq upending the lives of millions among which the Yazidi people living around Mount Sinjar this event began the odyssey of the guest. I'm very pleased to welcome on this week's podcast Ms Adiba Qasim. Adiba Qasim is one of the Global Fellowship Initiative’s “Young Leaders in Foreign and Security Policy”. Born into a Yazidi family of the Sinjar district in northern Iraq, she was about to begin her university studies in Mosul in 2014 when ISIS captured the area, forcing her to flee alongside members of her family. Undaunted by her displacement, she then became a freelance journalist as well as assistant to foreign media covering the Kurdish, Iraq government and coalition forces counter-offensive that resulted in the retrieval of Mosul in 2016 and 2017. She also worked with the Yazidi survivors who were held in captivity by Islamic state, as well as forcefully recruited child soldiers of ISIS. She is an asylum seeker in Switzerland she has been sponsored and arrived at the GCSP in the autumn of 2018. She has since enrolled at the University of Geneva and continues to testify on behalf of her community. She has been profiled by both Swiss television and print media, most recently the Tribune de Genève. Adiba Qasim’s story and accomplishments have mightily impressed us all at the GCSP. And it is the further this that I'm very pleased to speak with you this week. So welcome again, Adiba, welcome to the podcast.

A Yazidi woman's survival story

Monique Sokhan survived the Cambodian genocide, having fled the Khmer Rouge terror when she was just a small child. Now, working as Senior Protection Coordinator, at UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, she is still searching for answers about the atrocities that killed many of her family members. 

“It’s difficult because you’re wondering why others have died and you’re alive. And for those who did not survive […] I felt like having a responsibility somehow to do something that would make them proud of me.” 

Dedicating her life to humanitarian work, Monique soon found herself face to face with the very people who were responsible for killing her own family and friends. In this special bitesize episode, she reflects on her quest to understand the perpetrators of genocide, on reserving judgement, and on the unanswered questions that continue to haunt her.

S5E6: Not Here to Judge You - Bitesize Special - Monique Sokhan (UNHCR)

Dear Refugee is an occasional series featuring letters from young people to refugees who have shaped their lives.

You can read and listen to more letters from this series here: https://www.unhcr.org/dear-refugee

My Dear Ba - Aryan

Website: https://www.un.org/en/awake-at-night
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaFlemingUN
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MelissaFleming
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissarfleming

What does it take to be a United Nations worker in some of the world’s most complex and dangerous places? How are UN humanitarians, human rights advocates, prosecutors, development experts, climate leaders and peacekeepers improving our world? Stationed in all reaches of the world and witness to suffering and atrocities, how are they helping people and coping themselves? 

To find out, Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, meets them.

Here, you will discover extraordinary personal stories from people who devote their lives to helping others.

S5E6: Not Here to Judge You - Bitesize Special - Monique Sokhan (UNHCR)

AWAKE AT NIGHT - with Melissa Fleming

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