My guest is Richard Gowan. Richard Gowan is a UN director at the International Crisis Group based in New York.

Welcome to the podcast, Richard.

Thank you very much for having me on.

Well, I was key to have you on the podcast because we're coming up very soon to the United Nations General Assembly Ungar to the aficionados.

But before we delve into the, go into the weeds of that next week's

Ungar, I want you to tell me a bit about what the international crisis group is and what your

role as UN director within the ICG is. So crisis group is a global conflict prevention organisation.

I have colleagues who work in pretty tough places like Afghanistan

and Venezuela tracking crises and tracking humanitarian situations. And they do this amazing reporting

that gives us a real sense of what is going on the ground in conflict zones.

My job is rather cushier.

I live in Brooklyn and I take the subway to the UN and I spend my time talking to UN officials and diplomats about what the UN could do better to deal with the problems

of Lebanon, the problems of Yemen, whatever is on the international agenda.

Right.

So not quite the same thing as David Miller-Bahn's International Rescue Committee,

also based in New York.

People do confuse us, but IRC is more focused on pure humanitarian work.

Whereas crisis group is more focused on what are the Taliban thinking or what are the

Houthis thinking in Yemen.

More that sort of aspect of conflict.

But we're all friends. We're all

in the same bubble. Right. Very good. All right then. So it's, it's Ungard time. It seems to come

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