The headquarters of the United Nations is currently in New York, but in fact the headquarters was originally located in Geneva, Switzerland. It currently functions as the United Nations European Headquarters and the main European office. You can actually tour the UN. Here is an introduction to what you can see when you tour.
What is Geneva?
First, let me give a brief explanation of Geneva, where the United Nations is located. Geneva is a city in western Switzerland, very close to France. The town is located on the shores of Lake Geneva, and there is a fountain that shoots up to a height of 140m from the lake. Switzerland has four official languages, and although Geneva is a French-speaking city, it is an international city where English is used daily.
Click here for tourist information about Geneva.
About the United Nations in Geneva
The United Nations office in Geneva is officially called the United Nations Office at Geneva. It was originally established as the headquarters of the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, and functioned there until the headquarters was moved to New York. It currently serves as the European headquarters. In addition, many international specialized agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), are still based in Geneva.
About the tour
It is possible to visit the United Nations Geneva Office by joining a tour.
Tour duration: 1 hour
(arrive 45 minutes before your scheduled time)
Cost: 15 CHF
Reservations must be made in advance via the official website.
【Tour Homepage】
https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/ungeneva/items/?flow=503972&language=en-us&full-items=yes
Access
To get to the United Nations Office, take the tram. First, take tram line 15 (brown line) to Nations and get off at the last stop. When you exit the station, you will see a large chair monument.
If you look closely, you can see that the chair’s legs are missing, conveying a message about eliminating landmines. Behind this chair is the United Nations. However, you can’t enter from here, so you have to keep going up the slope on the left. Then, on the right, there is the entrance to the parking lot, and next to it is the entrance for visitors.
Tour procedure
Once inside the building, you present your passport at the counter and receive an admission pass. After that, you wait until there are more people, then follow the staff to another building. Since you are going outside, it is a precious time to walk around the UN grounds. Once you are there, there is a souvenir corner, where you wait again until the tour starts. There is also a postbox here, so you can send postcards from there.
When the time comes, follow the attendant and the tour will begin.
The tour will mainly consist of a tour of the conference rooms.
This secretariat alone holds more than 40 meetings a day, so many conference rooms are required. The exterior and interior of the building were more like a government office or a school than a typical European palace, but there were exhibits of items from around the world here and there.
The next conference room we visited had a distinctive ceiling.
It’s like the sky and the earth have been turned upside down. It’s a place where human rights-related meetings are mainly held.
After seeing these two conference rooms, we moved on to the next location. On the way, we could see the courtyard and the exterior of the Palais des Nations where we are now.
The courtyard was nicely maintained, but I wondered who would be walking around there.
The third meeting room was a European style venue.
The walls were decorated with a gold-plated depiction of the history of slavery through independence, and there were nametags of each country on the desks, arranged in alphabetical order.
The final conference room was a place I’d seen somewhere on TV.
We were able to sit down and there was a microphone for speaking. This was the end of the tour, and we left the souvenir corner and went out the same way.
What about the language barrier?
Even though it is not the headquarters, the Geneva Secretariat holds many meetings every day, but how do they deal with language? If attendees come from all over the world, they will speak a variety of languages. That’s where interpreters come in. In fact, there is a space set aside for interpreters in the conference room, and you can listen to the interpreted content through earphones at your seat.
When you think of the world’s common language, you think of English, right? But actually, there are six official languages in international organizations: English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. That doesn’t mean that communication always takes place in these six countries, and the languages used vary depending on the international organization.
Among them, English and French are the most commonly used. English is understandable because it is a common language, but French was surprising. If you think about it, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) spoke French at the press conference. In fact, French is used as an official language in 26 countries around the world, making it the most used official language in the world. For this reason, French is given preferential treatment in international organizations. According to the tour commentary, if there is a discrepancy in the translation, French takes precedence, so it seems certain that French is given preferential treatment.
United Nations World Map
The UN mark in the last conference room. There is a world map in the middle, but it has an unfamiliar shape. World maps are made with each country at their center. A world map of Japan has Japan at the center, and a world map of France has France at the center.
However, the UN believes that there are no differences between countries, so they use a world map centered on the Arctic.
Summary
This was an introduction to the tour of the United Nations Secretariat in Geneva. It is a rare opportunity to enter an international organization that you normally do not enter, so if you go to Geneva, be sure to join the tour. Please note that the tour will guide you to open conference rooms, so if the conference room featured in this article is in use, you may be guided to a different room.
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