Inside Geneva’s Summer Profiles are back. In this episode we talk to Tammam Aloudat, doctor, aid worker and now journalist. “I was born in Syria, and I spent most of my life there until my mid-20s. I studied there; I went to medical school there,” says the CEO of The New Humanitarian. Was being a doctor in Syria his first choice? “One of the first side effects of autocratic dictatorships is that there isn’t really work outside a few private enterprises, one of which is being an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor,” he says. A chance meeting with a British Red Cross official led him into humanitarian work. “And a couple of years later, when I wanted to go out and work for the Red Cross, it was him who gave me a contract with the British Red Cross and sent me to Iraq. I mean, arguably not the nicest thing to do to someone, but it was exactly what I had asked for.” But the disastrous consequences of that conflict made him question his work, and the traditional neutrality of humanitarianism.
