Nothing keeps me awake, everything keeps me going, with Peter Hawkins | UNICEF Yemen |Awake at Night
Every day, Peter Hawkins wakes up filled with determination to make a difference. As the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Yemen, he puts that boundless energy into helping young people survive one of the world’s most intractable humanitarian crises.
“Despite serving in some of the most challenging and difficult places, I’ve been lucky,” he says. “I’ve loved my life. I have no regrets. Every day I wake up, I feel there’s something I can do. There’s things I enjoy. So nothing keeps me awake, everything keeps me going during the day.”
After a decade of conflict and collapse, a new generation of Yemenis are yearning for a better tomorrow: “So the children sit there in these classrooms with no walls, no floors, no desks, and learn, and they’re proud about what they learn. And they come to me and say, ‘Look, don’t worry, we will continue to learn. But if you can give us desks, if you can fill up the walls and you can give us a floor and a blackboard, it will be even better.’”
In this episode, Peter Hawkins reflects on the striking resilience of the people he serves, and shares how his upbringing in Ethiopia and service in Iraq taught him to never give up working for change. For him, the biggest challenge today is not so much about raising awareness, but about action. “It is so important to understand how one side of the world is so lucky and the other side of the world is still desperately poor, and how we bring those two together.”
[00:00] Introduction
[01:41] Impact of war on children
[04:20] Reflections on resilience and decades of turmoil
[06:07] The magic of Sana’a
[08:42] Children’s determination to learn
[12:39] The impact of reduced funding
[15:18] Focusing on women and mothers
[18:17] What keeps Peter going
[19:54] Roots in Ethiopia
[23:52] Raising awareness then and now
[25:53] His parents’ influence
[27:44] Why multilateralism still matters
[29:54] A child’s unique identity
[31:04] Memories from Mosul, Iraq
[35:35] Life beyond work and hope for future generations
[38:19] Closing remarks
Listen to more Awake at Night episodes: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwoDFQJEq_0b6hu1e8oxsch9W0D7vkNqt
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About Awake at Night
Hosted by Melissa Fleming, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, the podcast ‘Awake at Night’ is an in-depth interview series focusing on remarkable United Nations staff members who dedicate their career to helping people in parts of the world where they have the hardest lives – from war zones and displacement camps to areas hit by disasters and the devastation of climate change.
For more Information or to watch the video on YouTube, click here.