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Awake At NightAuthor: United Nations, Melissa Fleming
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 meets them. Here you will discover extraordinary personal stories from people who devote their lives to helping others. Language: en Genres: Government, News, News Commentary Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Why peace begins with people, not power, with Bintou Keita - Former UN Secretary-General's Special Representative DRC
Episode 8
Tuesday, 3 February, 2026
Bintou Keita knows instinctively that some moments call for a more human response than words alone can offer. Once, at a ceremony to mark the end of the devastating Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, she found herself hesitating to deliver her pre-prepared statement to a grief-stricken crowd. "I have my statement, but I can't deliver [it] because there's something else I have to do before. And in that moment, what came to me was humming, so I did it. And at that moment, the tears - my own, the tears in the audience - came out. These people were grieving, were still mourning." Bintou Keita has retired after 36 years with the UN, most recently the Secretary-General's Special Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and head of the peacekeeping mission there. In this episode, she reflects on times when peacekeepers saved thousands of lives, on how women can lead the way out of devastating conflicts, and shares why she has learned to never say never. "We kind of lost our way to our heart. We believe that there is a divide between when we are working and when we are not working. And I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work." Transcript, photos and more: https://www.un.org/en/awake-at-night/s12-bintou-keita-why-peace-begins-with-people-not-power
