S6-Episode 4: Fighting Disinformation to Survive

 

Irene Khan 00:00

I remember a bullet once coming into my bedroom and I was sleeping there with my sisters. We all had to jump and go under the bed. And you know what kept us alive then? We lived on BBC, because we didn't trust… Of course, the local radio was full of propaganda. That information, that access to information from outside the conflict from a source that we felt was verifiable and trustworthy, was so important for us as a family. To know whether we flee, whether we stay. Should we go east or west? That's why I call it a survivor right.

Melissa Fleming 00:41

I found this interview so inspiring. Irene Khan knows personally how vital it is to have trustworthy information, especially in times of conflict. How it can be a matter of life or death. And it's something she has dedicated her life to. From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. My guest today is Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. That's a challenging job, Irene. Especially now given that we live in an age where disinformation is rife, where there is war, where there are attacks on freedom of the press. What is keeping you awake at night right now?

Irene Khan 01:38

Well, what's keeping me awake is how to keep open the channels of communication, the access to information, the enormous power that digital technology has given to citizens, to ordinary people to be empowered through information. And the challenge, of course, as you said, is that great pool of information is being sullied with disinformation, misinformation, hate speech. But how do we preserve the water? How do we keep the water pure, so that people can drink from it? That's the challenge. That we don't throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater because we need to be able to access information. We need to be able to have open debates. We need to inform each other. We need to communicate. To do all that, and to ensure that that can be done safely by everyone.

Melissa Fleming 02:32

And yet, you know, since the advent of social media this has become more of a challenge to preserve that space.

Irene Khan 02:39

Indeed, it has. Social media - when it first emerged - was seen as this wonderful tool that would help us connect with our friends overseas and our family. And people like you and me who are far away from friends and family. It was a great thing. But somehow, I think it's got out of hand, if I can put it that way. The business model of social media is of course to make money. And therefore, the algorithms, the ad tech business model, the data mining that takes place, has made that space, quite a dangerous space, effectively manipulating information. And there I think is room for companies, governments, as duty bearers of human rights, and as individuals, as users of platforms, but also as right holders, civil society, to come together to reframe that information model. The communications model that has gone, I think it's gone out of whack a little bit if I can put it that way.

Melissa Fleming 03:42

What effect has that had on ordinary people? I mean, to have this tool, which I remember when it came, as well, as a communicator, I was, ‘This is amazing. We can speak directly to the people, we can put out our information, and we can engage with people directly.’ And yet it's turned really dark.

Irene Khan 04:02

Well, you know, the amazing thing is that I've been speaking to women who have been victims of online gender-based attacks. I've been speaking to human rights activists and others. No one has said shut down the platforms. They need those platforms, particularly those who are not able to communicate, organize, exchange freely their views in the offline world. And I'm talking now about women, political groups, religious or ethnic minorities, LGBTQI people, who don't have the space. Traditional social structures don't give them that space to speak out. They need these platforms, but they are the ones who actually get a lot of hate speech and a lot of online attacks. So, this is where I think it's extremely important for the companies to take responsibility as conveyors as vectors of disinformation, but also governments to realize that they need to regulate companies smartly, not bluntly. Because they need to preserve the rights of people to communicate freely, exchange ideas and information. But at the same time prevent misuse of that. You know, under international law freedom of expression is not an absolute right. There are restrictions. For example, hate speech is prohibited. You can restrict speech where it harms the rights of another person, the reputation of another person. Defamation laws are there. So, there are means to contain the worst aspects of speech. But obviously, those restrictions have to be applied restrictively, proportionately as a necessity in a legitimate way, and not censor out everything. So, there's a great responsibility, I think on governments, but also on companies.

Melissa Fleming 05:52

You've been saying that out loud for many months. The United Nations, the Secretary-General, we've been calling out the platforms to do more to reduce the harm, to tone down hate speech, remove the hate speech. And yet, it seems to just keep getting worse.

Irene Khan 06:13

Yes, but there are also good stories to be told. I think, for example, the Digital Services Act of the European Union. And that's an important breakthrough from states, where they are looking at ways how the platforms can be more transparent, how the platforms can undertake due diligence. So, there is kind of a framework that is emerging, by which you can have the access to information that we all love on the platforms, but at the same time some degree of a certain type of behaviour by the platforms. Taking some responsibility for content moderation. Taking some responsibility for the algorithms they're using. And I think that's the kind of a balanced approach that we should be promoting. The companies have signed up with the European Commission on a strengthened code of conduct on disinformation. So, I think slowly some rules are being set for the information sector.

Melissa Fleming 07:15

Propaganda and disinformation. They've been a part of warfare forever, but now we have the digital world. Are things worse now?

Irene Khan 07:27

Well, as you said, information has always been used by warring parties. What I think digital technology, and social media together have done. First of all, they have made it possible to distort reality in a way that was not possible before, for example, with deep fakes. And secondly, they have provided the channels for distributing this manipulated information among civilians. There is a focus on civilians now. And that means, you know, manipulation of information leading to genocide, for instance. When systems break down, when people are in a very vulnerable state as they happen to be during war, that is when information - trustworthy, verifiable information - becomes even more important. And we should look at the right to information in conditions of war as a survival right.

Melissa Fleming 08:21

I mean, you talk about information as a survival right to somebody who is suffering in a war. Do you have a story? Can you think of one person that might illustrate this need, and right?

Irene Khan 08:35

Let me tell you about my own story. I come from Bangladesh. And I was about 12 or 13 in 1971 when there was a war in Bangladesh. You may remember there was a war of secession where Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan. It used to be East Pakistan. And I remember that we were stranded in the middle of the city in Dhaka. I had a grandfather who was paralyzed. He couldn't move, and therefore the family couldn't escape. So, we lived through that war there. I remember a bullet once coming into my bedroom, and I was there sleeping with my sisters. We all had to jump and go under the bed, things like that. And you know what kept us alive there. Because we had family abroad. We had no means of communication. That was pre-digital age. We lived on BBC. At night we turn… Because we could didn't trust… Of course, the local radio was full of propaganda, military propaganda, Pakistani military propaganda. We didn't trust it. And we heard all kinds of rumours, you know, in the bazaar, or on the streets, and we saw people. I remember seeing bodies lying on the street going to school. Horrible experiences for a young girl. And what we did was at night, we would turn on the radio and we would listen. That information, that access to information from outside the conflict from a source that we felt was verifiable and trustworthy, was so important for us as a family to know whether we flee, whether we stay. Should we go east or west? Is the military action taking place in a particular area or not? That's why I call it a survivor right.

Melissa Fleming 10:09

Can you imagine being that little girl in that same war in the digital age? How would you use the tools that exist now? And do you think it might have made that war even worse?

Irene Khan 10:23

Well, it might have improved things, if I could have contacted my family abroad. You know, if I had VPN, I could have accessed news sources from outside. At the same time, if I didn't have those facilities. If I had internet disruptions. If I had weak internet, for example. If media outlets were banned, and access to certain social media platforms were also distorted or banned, or there was information that was harmful, and I had no means of judging what was real and what was not real. It could have been, of course, much more dangerous.

Melissa Fleming 11:02

How does that experience of growing up…? I mean, how much of your childhood was as a war child?

Irene Khan 11:11

Well, it's interesting. My sisters and I, we were studying English language in a school run by Irish nuns in Dhaka. And after the war, of course, the new government came in and they introduced Bangla as the language to build the nation state. You know, they were interested in building this nationalism up. And the war had destroyed the universities, the schools. There was a lot of gun violence on the campus, because young men who had fought in the war had come home with their guns. You know, there was no proper rehabilitation. Millions of refugees were coming across the border from India. Refugees that UNHCR had been taking care of in India. And there was no rehabilitation programme in Bangladesh as such. Not much of a rehabilitation. So, it's quite dangerous. So, my parents wanted us to go abroad. My father was a doctor. We were well off but not extremely wealthy.

And he had two girls. I and my sister that he had to sort of send abroad. And so, we came across an Irish organization that was working in Bangladesh – Concern. And Concern said that they could arrange education for us. And we wanted British education because that's the system in which I was. And I was just sort of 10th grade so, I still had two years to go. And you know what it's like in high school. And so, we were admitted in schools in Northern Ireland. And I arrived in Northern Ireland in 1973. Straight from one war situation to another one. And my parents had no idea. They had never been outside the Indian subcontinent. There wasn't that information flow that we see today. And I had no idea that there was a war going on in Northern Ireland at that time. The IRA was very active. But in some ways, you know, I kind of took it in my stride. And I remember once… I was in a boarding school, and I remember telling one of my school friends, that, ‘You know, here in Northern Ireland, when the IRA plant a bomb, they call you up, and they tell you they planted a bomb.’ That's not what was happening in Bangladesh. You could kind of see what, you know, how …I don't know what I would have done if I had come from a peaceful situation into Northern Ireland, but I survived.

Melissa Fleming 13:25

It might have been… I mean, what was it like arriving…? First of all, you'd also never been out of the country.

Irene Khan 13:31

I've never been out of the country. I was 16 years old. And my parents had never been out of the country. And they really had no idea what Europe was like. And there was this image of everything being beautifully organized, and everything sorted out and everything be nice there. Because we've had such a terrible time in our own country. And I went… I wanted to do humanities subjects – English, history, geography. So, I went to this private… It was a school run by Irish Catholic nuns. And my sister wanted to be a doctor. So, she was doing science subjects and science was not available at that school. So, she went into the state school, British school. And in my school, you know, I was the only non-Catholic. And my sister was in a Protestant school because the local Protestant population send their children to British schools, British government schools. And the Catholics send their children to the schools run by the nuns and the priests. So, the two of us have a very different perspective of what the war in Northern Ireland was like, what “the Troubles” as they call it there.

Melissa Fleming 14:34

How were you experiencing the war? How did you see it?

Irene Khan 14:37

Well, there were… There was quite a lot of IRA activity at that time in 1973. And the school I went to in Newry in County Down was near the border. So, there was obviously a lot of presence of British soldiers. But I was very well protected by the nuns. You know, how they protect the girls. So, I quite enjoyed my time there. And yeah, I loved it actually. To me it was, if I can say, it was kind of a more civilized war than what I had come from in Bangladesh.

Melissa Fleming 15:10

If any war can be civilized.

Irene Khan 15:12

Well, exactly. But as a child, you know, as a teenager you think, you know, ‘This is better than what I had before.’

Melissa Fleming 15:18

There were no bullets coming into your bedroom.

Irene Khan 15:19

There were no bullets coming into my bedroom, no. The nuns coming in at night to check what we were doing at night because this was a good Catholic school.

Melissa Fleming 15:25

And yet, you weren't Catholic.

Irene Khan 15:26

I'm not Catholic. I'm a Muslim.

Melissa Fleming 15:29

And how did they…?

Irene Khan 15:30

Well, they actually respected my religion very much. And it helped me to understand other cultures and other religions. I had also gone to a Catholic school in Bangladesh too. And I found that those schools were actually far more secular, because they taught you about diversity. It’s not just being secular but having to deal with diversity. You know, people who believe in religion and people who don't. People who have a different religion from you. So that helped to broaden my understanding in a way that I think the actual communities in Northern Ireland found it difficult. For them, you're either a Catholic or a Protestant. And if you were Catholic, you stayed with the Catholics. If you’re a Protestant, you stayed with the Protestants. But I actually benefited because I could go across both communities.

Melissa Fleming 16:16

And your sister was in Protestant school. What did she tell you?

Irene Khan 16:22

I was very pro Republic of Ireland. In our school we played camogie. And she played hockey. I studied Irish history, whereas in her school, they studied British history. So, you could sort of see how education kind of shapes people's attitudes. And that's very important for communication today. When we were talking earlier about disinformation and misinformation. Literacy, teaching people how to differentiate and understand and analyze the digital world is very important.

Melissa Fleming 16:58

And at that time, you were not given really the tools to understand both sides.

Irene Khan 17:04

Well, at that time, you know, first of all, digital information was not available on the Internet. The Internet didn't exist. So, one had libraries. And in libraries, you know, there were selected books. I was in a Catholic school. So of course, the nuns… You know, there was a lot of choice there. But I'm sure that there were certain books that the nuns didn't think was appropriate for young teenage girls. So, there was a degree of censorship there. I recall that the Irish girls that I was with, had very strong feelings about the British government, the soldiers. I remember one of the girls. We were 16,17,18, at the time. One of the girls dated a British soldier, a young British soldier. And the entire class kind of rejected her because she had befriended a British soldier. So, there were very strong Irish nationalist feelings in my school, although it was in British territory. But then I decided to go across to England to study law at University of Manchester. And a number of my Irish Catholic friends came with me because they wanted to watch Manchester play soccer. So, you see, there are unifying factors. You know, even in the sort of very divided communities, there are certain things like football that bring people together.

Melissa Fleming 18:39

You studied law as you just said. And then I understand you went and joined the UN, the UN Refugee Agency.

Irene Khan 18:47

I actually studied law in Manchester. And then I came to Harvard and did graduate school. And it was actually… I mean, I had been studying a little bit on civil rights and so on in Manchester, but it was a straightforward law degree. I wasn't happy with it. I didn't really think I fitted into the legal community. I couldn't imagine myself sort of dealing with property and corporations and so on. So, I came to Harvard to do a master's there. And that's when I opened my eyes to human rights. That was the time of the Iranian Revolution. I had Iranian students in my class. Some who were pro monarchy. Some who were pro the Islamist regime. And a lot of exposure to politics and to discussion. And I loved the freedom of graduate school in the US, because it's sort of multi-disciplinary. Showed me that you can have a law degree but there are many other things you can do than being just a lawyer. And I applied for a Ford Foundation human rights fellowship. And I got it.

And I came to Geneva to work as an intern at the International Commission of Jurists, and then bumped into some UNHCR people at a social occasion. And they said UNHCR was hiring because that was the time of the great exodus of boat people from Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos. You know, I'm talking about 1980. And so, I signed up. Went for an interview. And I was interviewed by someone that anyone from UNHCR listening might remember from my generation - Ivor Jackson - who was a great authority on law. So, everyone… I didn't know that at that time, but everyone was terrified of his legal knowledge. He was working on a paper for the Executive Committee of UNHCR on extradition and refugee status. So, when I went for the interview, he started asking me all about extradition. Luckily, my master's thesis had been on extradition. And so of course, I gave all the right answers. And he thought, if I knew so much about extradition, I must know so much about everything else as well. And so, I got the job in 1980.

Melissa Fleming 20:52

So, what was your first assignment?

Irene Khan 20:54

My first assignment was in Geneva. At that time, you know, the refugees were coming out of Viet Nam, the boat people into Hong Kong and other places. And it was to set up the rules. And I remember very early on I looked at the issue of unaccompanied minors, where parents were putting children on the boats and sending them out. Because children were more likely to be accepted in the West, and then the parents would come later. Or maybe the parents just wanted the best thing for the children. But these poor children… And UNHCR did not have a policy or rules for unaccompanied minors. Until then its experience had been with families or with adults. So, setting up the rules, how do we deal with these children. Later, I also was involved with looking at refugee women and standards setting being set up for refugee women. And how it wasn't just about rights. It was actually about how you provide assistance, looking at for example, latrines. Are they well-lit? The path from the tent to the latrine. Now this is absolutely a basic thing that UNHCR does these days. But there was a situation in the 1980s and early 90s where UNHCR had not thought through these things. But it was beginning to. Bringing in experts from outside and getting us on the ground to learn more about this. So those were very exciting times in UNHCR.

Melissa Fleming 22:14

You could really influence safer refugee existence for women and children. Did you then manage to get to the field and meet some of the unaccompanied minors or some of the women?

Irene Khan 22:27

Yes, I did. Actually, to Pakistan. Was my first field assignment. Working in Islamabad with the Iranian refugees who are coming out because they were individuals. UNHCR had massive camps for Afghans. So, it knew how to deal with the Afghan refugees. It didn't know what to do with individual cases. So, this was 1982-1983. You know, early years when individuals were coming out. There was already unrest inside Iran. The Communist parties and other parties were escaping. And I was heavily involved in setting up the first UNHCR office in Karachi. Interviewing a lot of individuals. I also went to the refugee camps, together with the Deputy Representative in Pakistan, who was a woman, a lady called Fiorella Cappelli. And she and I went to the refugee camps together with a female interpreter because we were going to go inside the tents and talk to the women, which our male colleagues could not do. And it was very funny. We had to go through, the leaders, the community leaders. The refugee leaders sort of wanted to know who we were, what we were doing. And Fiorella was asked whether she had children. And Fiorella said no. She wasn’t married. She had no children. And Fiorella was in her 50s at that time. And then they looked at me and said, did I have any children? And I said, ‘No, I'm not married.’ And then they looked at the interpreter, and she was also young. And then they said, ‘That is why we don't want people like you talking to our women and children.’

And that's what happens to women, you know. But in the end, we did get access. And it was very, very interesting to see how women were actually managing the household. And what was very interesting was a lot of the food that was being provided to the refugees - it was flour and milk powder, and so on. Whether or not it was getting to the refugees, or it was going out into the market. And UNHCR was in the early stages of thinking about how to provide assistance to households, because the refugee leaders were very much in control of the whole system in the camps. Because we were able to go inside and talk to the women. We could look at their pots and say, ‘Ah, what are you making today? How come you don't have any yoghurt?’ And then the woman would say, ‘Oh, we didn't get any milk powder this week.’ And we knew that milk powder had been distributed. So, you know, we could track back and find out why milk powder wasn't reaching the women and children and then better systems of distribute food distribution came in. And that was the sort of the origins of this empowerment of refugee women.

Melissa Fleming 25:00

How long did you work for UNHCR?

Irene Khan 25:03

I joined in 1980, and I left in 2001. So, about 21 years.

Melissa Fleming 25:09

You then became the head of Amnesty International. The first woman, the first Asian and the first Muslim to do so. How did your background make a difference there?

Irene Khan 25:22

I think what my background taught me was how rights are universal. But diversity is very important. And therefore, people experience both the right and the violations in different ways. And so, it's very important to contextualize human rights. And coming from it in the governmental organization into a non-governmental, one of the things that I struggled with. And I would ask my Amnesty colleagues, ‘Okay, I go in, and I criticize the government, but what can I offer the government? What’s the solution here?’ And there, I sometimes felt a bit hampered, because it wasn't anything that Amnesty could offer, as such, because Amnesty’s model does not allow that. And that's why I think multi-stakeholder approaches are so important. And then sometimes we did that. And sometimes we would talk to governments that were allied to the country where human rights violations were taking place. And we'd say, ‘Look. These are the problems we see, but your assistance can come in a different way.’

I remember in eastern Congo actually meeting Denis Mukwege at that time. He was the only gynaecologist operating on the border of the Congo. And a lot of the cases there were very severe, very vicious attacks on women. You know, sexual attacks on women who needed gynaecological help. And there was only one gynaecologist for that whole area. There were other kinds of medical assistance being provided. But the understanding… And Amnesty, I think, revealed that whole problem of violence against women during conflicts with a major report. And we were able to go to the European Union and tell them, ‘Look. If you're providing assistance, you need to strengthen this assistance that women need - obstetrics and gynaecology. Because there's so much of that for all these women who are being, you know, attacked by the different armed groups that are operating there.’ So, we had to work with governments as well. The point I'm trying to make here is that very often human rights are seen as the business of the of civil society. But human rights are very much the business of states.

Melissa Fleming 27:43

There has to be a push and a pull.

Irene Khan 27:44

Exactly, exactly. And I will not name the Minister for Foreign Affairs of a Western country, who at that time, remember it’s a war on terror. So, there were lots of counterterrorism issues. And I also picked up human rights abuses in developed countries. It wasn't only a story about what was happening in the Congo, but what was happening in the UK, what was happening in the US, you know, Guantanamo, and so on. And I remember going to a European government and talking about the practices of his… The foreign minister about the practices of his government in relation to counterterrorism and so on. And he was very sympathetic. He understood because he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Of course, he had to deal with the human rights machinery of the UN. And then he said, ‘Why don't you get your Amnesty activists and have a demonstration outside the Prime Minister's office? So, I can go to the cabinet meeting and say, look, you know, you've got all these terrible activists who are putting so much pressure here and they’re turning public opinion around. Do that!’ And I said, ‘Fine. I do that if you go into the cabinet office, and you talk to your minister, to your Prime Minister.’ And so sometimes we would find actually some allies in governments as well, in interesting partnerships.

Melissa Fleming 28:56

Did anything come of that?

Irene Khan 28:58

I think so. I mean, not entirely, but I think they began to realize. Because, of course, we didn't just go and demonstrate in order to please the foreign minister. Amnesty is a membership-based organization. And there were hundreds of thousands of Amnesty members in that country. And so, Amnesty has electoral power, voting power. And that often meant that in democratic countries, you know, Amnesty gets listened to.

Melissa Fleming 29:24

It has enormous influence. It must have felt in a way like your voice was unleashed, because in intergovernmental organizations, we are constrained for reasons because… And we have to operate in many countries in the world. How does it feel that you could be really outspoken for the first time?

Irene Khan 29:44

It felt very good. It felt very good because you could say things and we did say it and it felt good at that time. Because you know, there was so much of hypocrisy in the human rights world at that time, where developed countries were pointing fingers at developing countries. But at the same time, they were closing their own borders to refugees. They were using counterterrorism laws, locking people up without trial, fair trial. All sorts of things that they had stood up for, all the principles. So, it felt good talking about it. But it felt terrible to think how human rights were being undermined by those who profess to be champions of human rights.

Melissa Fleming 30:30

You mentioned the report that under your time as Amnesty Secretary General came out that really influenced and exposed rape as a weapon of war being deployed. And that there were some changes made. Is there any person you met, where you feel, you know, this is somebody I can't get out of my mind that really illustrates this horror that is so prevalent in our conflicts today?

Irene Khan 31:06

It's hard to point out one single person, but what I found were the voices of the people. I heard so many stories in Darfur. I remember meeting a woman. I have a photo of that woman talking about the village had been destroyed, and there were no men left to bury the dead. And the women had to bury the dead and they walked miles and miles and miles to reach this particular camp for the internally displaced people. And I remember asking her about human rights. And then she turned to me, and she said, ‘I want justice.’ And I realized that justice was a much more easily understandable concept than human rights. So, that was something that sticks in my mind.

The other thing I remember is a girl of about 16 years old in a prison in Kabul. And I had gone to a woman's prison in Kabul, where a lot of these women were being locked up in order to prevent them from being victims of honour killings. In this particular case, this young girl had been abducted by someone who forced her into a marriage, mistreated her and abused her and so on. And she fled. But she could not go back home. And she ended up in that prison. And I used that actually to push, to bring about change also in Amnesty. Because Amnesty has this notion of prisoner of conscience. And you release the prisoner of conscience right from a prison. And I went back to Amnesty activists, and I said, ‘She's a prisoner. And she's a prisoner of conscience because she has not used any force or violence. And, you know, for her belief that she does not want to be forced into a marriage. But we cannot release her from the prison.’ And that means the causes of human rights are not so simple. And we would have to work with all sorts of social systems at the community level and with the development actors and with other actors, to change the situation so that this girl can go home in safety.

Melissa Fleming 33:19

I wonder if hearing all these stories, meeting these people. I mean, rape as a weapon of war, honour killing. Does this get you angry sometimes?

Irene Khan 33:30

It gets me depressed sometimes. Because now when I look at certain situations. They haven't really changed, and that's depressing. So, I get angry at those who have power and do not use it. Well, those who have voice and do not use it. That's, you know, I think where my anger is directed.

Melissa Fleming 33:57

What do you do when you get depressed?

Irene Khan 33:58

What I think about actually is about those people that I met in Darfur and in Kabul and so on. And I think, you know, they talked to me about their problems, and I had nothing to offer them. I was not UNHCR, so I could not offer them material assistance or international protection. I was just an individual as far as they were concerned. And they had not lost hope. You know, they were still talking about, you know, going on with their lives doing this or that. And this young woman was saying, you know, she wanted to go to school. The old lady was talking about, you know, how she wanted to bring her family together, get justice, build herself up. And the same thing with UNHCR. Every time I've gone to refugee camps. I've seen refugees rebuilding their lives. Across the river, I remember vividly a scene from Myanmar around the Karnaphuli river in Bangladesh, where they crossed the river - this group of refugees - and I saw the family, sort of groups were there. The men sort of said under the tree, and they were tired and they very exhausted, and were, you know, sort of waving the flies off. And after a while the woman gets up. And then she goes and gets a bit of firewood, and she opens a little package and gets out a pot. And then she starts making some food and you know, starts feeding the children. And there's recovery. There's rehabilitation taking place already. You know the strength that they have, the resilience they have. And that's admirable. And that sort of… It feels nice to be able to contribute something, even if it's very small, to that process.

Melissa Fleming 35:28

You have seen and you've experienced quite a lot of things that would get people down. I'm just wondering what you do like personally in your free time. You look very fit. How do you do it?

Irene Khan 35:43

Well, I have a daughter. And I think having a child is great. Because when you come home… And when she was little, I would come home with all these problems, you know, every day. There was something or the other, and I would be totally exhausted by the time I'd come home. But she would be there. She would be demanding for me to read her story before she goes to sleep, or I have to give her a bath or something or the other. And I would have to throw away everything else and focus on that child. And that was probably the best therapy I had at that time. Nowadays, I make jam.

Melissa Fleming 36:12

What kind of jam?

Irene Khan 36:14

All kinds of fruits. I experiment with mixed fruits. And you know, I'm fortunate to spend some time in Geneva. I have a house just outside Geneva and so I go fruit hunting. And I spent some time in Rome as Director-General of the International Development Law Organization. Lots of fruits there. And, you know, experiment to see whether the jam sets or not. And you have to be very patient with jam. Because that gives you patience. So, you stand there in front of the hot stove, chopping the fruit, putting it in. Brings a certain kind of discipline to your life.

Melissa Fleming 36:43

Maybe there are some analogies there of how one has to…

Irene Khan 36:47

And I love cooking and the fusion cuisine, because you know, I'm an Asian. Spent a lot of time in many different countries. So, try to bring that in. And there's a satisfaction in feeding people.

Melissa Fleming 36:58

And when you look at the human rights situation in the world today, is there anything that gives you hope?

Irene Khan 37:06

Yes, young people. You know, the Greta Thunbergs of this world. Their sort of, “we will not take no for an answer” approach. And their sense of responsibility. They're inheriting an earth that needs to be taken care of that our generation and generations before us have not done the job well enough. And they're not afraid to speak up. They're standing up. They're fighting. They're mobilizing. They're using new means of mobilization, including digital technology, as we talked about earlier. And some of them are being courageous enough to give up, for example, eating meat, or to try to live less consumer-oriented lives. So, I think they're very inspiring young people.

Melissa Fleming 37:57

This conversation was also very inspiring. Thank you so much, Irene. And it's great to be with you in person in the studio in Geneva.

Irene Khan 38:07

Thank you for inviting me.

Melissa Fleming 38:08

Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working to do some good in this world at a time of global crisis.

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. On Twitter, we’re @UN and I'm @melissafleming. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please do take the time to review us. It helps more people find the show.

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell, to Jen Thomas, Adam Paylor and the team at Purpose and to my colleagues at the UN: Roberta Politi, Katerina Kitidi, Geneva Damayanti, Tulin Battikhi, Bissera Kostova and the team at the UN studio. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier.