Awake At Night

Adiba Qasim is from the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. In August 2014, her village was stormed by Islamic State militants who killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis. Adiba and her family managed to escape just before the militants arrived. She was 19 years old. She was haunted by the knowledge that many of her friends and relatives were taken captive by Islamic State and held as sex slaves. Some survived – and when they were freed, Adiba was there to help.

For the season 2 finale of UNHCR’s podcast series, the actor and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett talks about what keeps her Awake at Night. Describing her experience of working with UNHCR and meeting refugees as “one of the great privileges of my life”, Blanchett reflects on how it has profoundly altered her perception of human suffering and the capacity to hope.

Boris Cheshirkov worked for UNHCR as a spokesperson in his native Bulgaria during Europe’s refugee crisis. It was an extremely tense time. Countries throughout Europe seemed at a loss at how to cope with the flow of desperate people. Anti-refugee feeling was running high. In Bulgaria, an asylum seeker was shot dead at the border. But when Boris spoke out against the violence, he himself became the target of a virulent online hate campaign.

Shahrzad Tadjbakhsh is an effective and tireless advocate of human rights. A lawyer, she holds a senior position at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, working on refugee protection. But she has never lost her human touch. Perhaps it’s a legacy of her own experience as a refugee when she was just 10 years old. In 1979, her father was serving as the Iranian ambassador in India. But following the revolution in Iran, the whole family had to flee from Delhi.

Even in the middle of a war zone, Bruno Geddo manages to light up the room and make people smile, maybe even laugh. He is somebody who deeply appreciates different cultures in the world and sees beauty in the ugliest of times. For 30 years now, he has been helping the victims of conflict in the world’s most dangerous places with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. His most recent posting was to Iraq, from where he spoke about the impact of the violent battle with the Islamic State.

Monique Sokhan fled from the terror of the Khmer Rouge and the genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s, when she was just a small child. Many of her family members who stayed behind did not survive. As she felt a responsibility to do something that would make them proud, she decided to work for refugees. But her first job for UNHCR was in Thailand, as a Protection Officer in camps for Khmer Rouge refugees.

Fabrizio Hochschild has reached one of the highest positions in the United Nations. But he’s managed this achievement while learning to deal with the trauma he suffered while experiencing the horrors of the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. At times he thought it would cost him his career – but he now champions mental health care within the UN.

Would you go to a war zone to help people you've never met?  Hear the incredible stories of people who did just that.  A Silver Award winner at the British Podcast Awards 2019 - Season Two of Awake At Night from the UN Refugee Agency is coming soon.  

Best-selling author and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Khaled Hosseini describes his own experience of being a child refugee, and explains how his work with refugees has helped him overcome feelings of survivor's guilt.

Coming soon to Awake At Night. An interview with the bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini.  A child refugee from Afghanistan, Khaled describes how his experiences shaped his writing, and how working as a UNHCR Ambassador helped him overcome survivor's guilt.

Alessandra Morelli's incredible life has taken her from the convent to the front lines. A former novice nun, she made a dramatic life change when she decided to work with refugees who had fled war in Croatia. Since then, she has worked in conflict zones like Afghanistan, Yemen and Sri Lanka. While running the UNHCR mission in Somalia she survived two separate attacks by suicide bombers.

In over 20 years at the UN Refugee Agency, Felipe Camargo has worked in many of the world's most dangerous places. One of the places he has returned to multiple times is Bangladesh - where since 2017 more than 723,000 Rohingya refugees have sought safety from persecution in Myanmar.  Felipe describes what keeps him going back to the field - even in the face of his own personal tragedy.

Giles Duley used to live the rock'n'roll life of a fashion photographer, but now travels the world's war zones documenting the lives of those caught up in conflict. He stepped on a landmine while working in Afghanistan and lost three of his limbs, and very nearly his life.  This is his story.

Sajjad Malik is UNHCR's Representative in Syria - in charge of one of UNHCR's toughest and most dangerous humanitarian operations. Since taking up the post over two years ago, Sajjad has witnessed the terrible sieges of Homs and Aleppo. He says he feels compelled to speak out about the horrifying impact of war on children.

Fatima Mohammed was assigned to work in her hometown in northern Nigeria, a place full of happy childhood memories. But then she landed in Maiduguri and found check-points and constant fear at the heart of the fight with Boko Haram insurgents.