This mini episode kick starts the 2022 season of Intercross: The Podcast.

In this episode, we rewind the tape and listen to an interview with Florence Anselmo, Head of the Central Tracing Agency, a division of the ICRC that's been a crucial resource for families affected by conflict, disaster, and other situations of violence to restore contact with their loved ones. Florence helps break down what the agency does and why it's crucial to the work of the ICRC. 

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First Mini Episode for 2022 Season of Intercross

In this episode, we’re going to learn about how the ICRC works with what are known in Mexico as colectivos, or groups of families and friends who unite to search for their missing loved ones and defend their rights. We speak with Beatriz Adriana Martinez about her husband, Juan Alvarez Gil’s disappearance in 2013, to understand what a family goes through when a loved one goes missing and how these colectivos support Beatriz and the hundreds of thousands of other families. We also speak with Marlene Herbig, an ICRC delegate with the Missing Persons Program in Mexico, who works to help those who are searching for their missing loved ones know their rights, and how and when to seek mental health counseling.

Missing in Mexico

In this episode, we tell the story of the more than 150-year-old Central Tracing Agency, a division of the ICRC that today is a crucial resource for families searching for loved ones gone missing due to conflict, violence, natural disasters, or along the migration route. We take you for a trip back in time to the foundations of the CTA in 1860 to understand how this history has made it what it is today. You’ll hear from Geneva Tour Guide Catherine Hubert Girod and ICRC Historian Daniel Palmieri recount the history.

The CTA

Almost 40 years after the Falkland Islands/Malvinas conflict, we look back on the ICRC’s efforts to identify unknown soldiers. Figuring who these unknown soldiers were took decades to resolve. But in 2012, the ICRC received a request from the Argentine government to help identify their remains. Then in 2016 with the ICRC as a neutral intermediary Argentina and the UK negotiated and signed, an agreement known as the Humanitarian Project Plan. The crucial work of exhuming the graves and identifying remains fell to Luis Bernardo Fondebrider, co-founder of the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team. He worked with a multidisciplinary team of scientists from around the world who began the exhumations at the Argentine Cemetery at Darwin--on the central eastern side of the islands.

Identifying Argentina's Unknown Soldiers 40 Years Later

Prolonged drought, conflict, global inflation, and now a shortage of grain due to the Ukraine conflict. Somalia is particularly hard hit. Over 7 million people are in urgent need of food and water—that’s half the country’s population and equal to the populations of Los Angeles and Chicago, combined. The numbers are unfathomable. They represent millions of human stories and life experiences that don’t make headlines.

Despite all of this, the ICRC has been addressing food insecurity for decades in Somalia, offering emergency assistance in places where armed conflict and violence is an everyday reality. But there’s an increasing need for alternative solutions, to improve people’s resilience over the longer term. In this episode we speak with Alyona Synenko, an ICRC spokesperson for east Africa, explains the current situation on our show today. And then, we’ll hear from our colleague Mohamud Abdille Abdi, to learn about one emergency assistance program—and how it works on the ground.

Food Insecurity in the Horn of Africa

Following the change of government in August 2021, most of the health workers in Afghanistan were no longer getting paid. Medicines were no longer available, and many health professionals deserted the country’s hospitals in search of incomes. As a result, patients were sometimes refused access to treatment and the overall healthcare system in the country was on the verge of coming to a full stop. In this episode, we ask, what does the future of sustainable healthcare look like for millions of Afghans in need of lifesaving medical care? 

We speak with Dr. Mariam Moksudi, a gynecologist at Rabia Balkhi Hospital in Kabul and one of the 10,500 health care staff the ICRC is paying the salary to through the Hospital Resilience Project, which support 33 hospitals and nine medical institutions around the country. 

Then we turn to Ana Lucia Bueno, ICRC’s health coordinator in Kabul, who explains how the ICRC has been supporting hospitals for decades and began the project after the change of government in August last year.

Health Care in Afghanistan

Intense hostilities in Yemen have raged for more than seven years. The needs are severe and deepen by the minute with more than two-thirds of Yemen’s people in need of humanitarian assistance.  All, while essential services are on the brink of collapse and people are losing hope as the conflict appears to drag endlessly. In these past decades, the ICRC has been providing a wide array of humanitarian assistance including support to hospitals, improving access to clean water, and food parcels and relief items to people who have been displaced. However, one of the more challenging activities the ICRC facilitates in Yemen is monitoring the treatment and living conditions of tens of thousands of people—mostly men and some as young as 13--detained due to the prolonged conflict. We also work to facilitate the release and reunification of the detainees with their families when agreed upon by parties to the conflict.

In this episode, we speak with Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC’s head of the Middle East region, who tells the story of the organization’s largest wartime transfer operation of detainees in the past 70 years and reflects on what it means for the future of Yemen.e

Behind the Scenes: Inside the Release of More Than 1000 Detainees in Yemen’s Conflict

In this episode, we learn about the Ubumwe Community Center in Gisenyi, Rwanda, their motto, “disability is not inability,” and the importance of inclusion, especially in communities affected by violence. We first hear from one of the center’s student musicians about how the center’s music program has given him opportunities to perform for others. We then turn to Subhash Sinha, the ICRC’s Physical Rehabilitation Program Manager for east Africa to hear about our work providing prosthetics and orthotics and supporting inclusionary sports programs.

Inclusionary Programs in Rwanda

Learn more about the podcast through out general trailer.

General Trailer

The level of armed violence in Haiti—akin to what we see in areas of conflict around the world—has had a direct and devastating impact on the population living in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince. For about the last two years, these neighborhoods have been living under protracted armed violence and suffer from the absence of basic services like safe drinking water, and emergency healthcare. In this episode, we hear from a Haitian Red Cross volunteer about their work on an ambulance service despite the violence and lack of medical infrastructure. And then we turn to an interview with Mickael Payet, the former ICRC health coordinator in Haiti, to talk about how we work with HRC volunteers in communities to ensure access to emergency health service when people need it most.

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Accessing Health Care in Haiti

This is the former home of Intercross: The Podcast's RSS feed please see the link below for old and new episodes of the podcast: https://feeds.libsyn.com/426167/rss

The official podcast of the International Committee of the Red Cross out of the delegation in the US & Canada.  We aim to delve into the rules of war and take you to the frontlines of some of the most inaccessible conflicts in the world, where the ICRC and the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement work to neutrally and independently respond to emergencies. 

OUR MISSION: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance. The ICRC also endeavors to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.

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