Grace, the nursing robot at the AI for Good Global Summit (UNOG/Elma Okic)

🦿Humans aren’t delivering on the SDGs. Can robots do better? From monitoring the rebuilding of refugee camps to supporting healthcare providers, robots and their creators were out in force in Geneva this month to show how they can provide humans with a helping hand – or bionic leg.

🏦Afghan fund stuck in catharsis amid dire humanitarian crisis. Nearly a year after it was established, the operation of a Geneva-registered fund appears frozen in time waiting for political conditions to shift so that billions of dollars may be returned to Afghanistan’s central bank.

🗳️Scottish scientist Jim Skea elected as the UN climate panel’s new ‘nudger-in-chief’. The UN’s expert body on climate change elected on 26 July Scottish scientist and longtime insider Jim Skea as its new chair. In an interview ahead of the elections, Skea warned that countries need to get ready for the worst-case scenarios.

🧑‍⚖️Is Switzerland dragging its feet in criminalising torture? Switzerland does not have a clause in its laws punishing torture as a specific criminal offence, an omission that has long vexed rights groups and United Nations experts, who have renewed their calls for the nation to update its laws.

✔️Reality check on dealing with organised crime for aid groups? Aid workers have long treaded lightly when describing how and if they engage with communities affected by violent criminal activity. But as the types of armed conflict evolve, experts find that a void exists on how international humanitarian law may apply.

ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger at headquarters in Geneva. (Le Temps/David Wagnières)

🔎Mirjana Spoljaric Egger: 'An external audit of the ICRC is necessary'. In an exclusive interview with Le Temps and translated by Geneva Solutions, the first female president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) shared her strategic vision for the Geneva-based institution. Born in Croatia and raised in Basel, she still considers it important that the ICRC maintains its exclusively Swiss way of governance.

🦑WWF expert on deep-sea mining talks: expect more state support for moratorium. As crucial talks on the future of deep-sea mining enter their final days in Jamaica, the focus has moved away from what rules should look like to whether the extraction of valuable metals on the ocean floor should even take place – at least in the near future.

💭Deal or no grain deal, Africa is too dependent on global food markets. As Russia withdraws from a United Nations-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian grain to pass through the Black Sea and potentially threatening millions of people in need, the challenge for Africa is to go beyond and think about more sustainable agriculture on the continent, writes Mègnon Didier Bebada, the France director of Geneva-based think tank Africa21. Mègnon Didier Bébada

A Roman Catholic church in the Philippines’ Quezon city, two days ahead of the country’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court on 17 March 2019. On 18 July 2023, the ICC ruled that it still had jurisdiction to investigate drug-related killings that took place before the country pulled out. (Keystone/AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

⚖️ War crimes round-up. “The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on 18 July that it will relaunch its investigations into an anti-drug crackdown in the Philippines that killed thousands of people after rejecting the government’s bid to block it. The move is a big step towards justice for thousands of victims, who have had to wait almost two years since the ICC initially launched its probe, in September 2021, into possible crimes against humanity committed under former president Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership. Even though the case will move forward without the cooperation of the Philippines, it’s in the interest of the victims and the country that the government cooperates with the court.”