Page 206 - 100 Reflections that Crafted Geneva International_V-Petrovsky_private special edition

100 Reflections that Crafted Geneva International

numerous problems. First, competition between major cities for the right to
host any new United Nations body is becoming increasingly intense. For
example, the text of the Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated and
adopted in Geneva under the auspices of the Conference on Disarmament.
However, after several years of difficult negotiations involving many technical
problems, it has been decided to establish a body to monitor the
implementation of the Convention in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Other cities - Vienna in Austria and Bonn in Germany - offer very favorable
conditions for the accommodation of international entities. In my view, that
competition is a clear manifestation of countries' interest in the activities of the
United Nations and their desire to be directly linked to its work. At the same
time, it encourages them to act and actively seek solutions to existing problems.
For example, during recent meetings between the leadership of the European
headquarters of the United Nations and the Federal Government of the Swiss
Confederation, it was agreed that Switzerland would provide international
organizations with the same conditions of work as the best conditions provided
by other States.

The second problem is more serious. For a number of year now, the UN
has been in a state of severe financial crisis. Almost all international
organizations have stopped increasing budgets, a moratorium on the creation
of new bodies has been introduced, and structural adjustment and austerity
measures are being taken. In some organizations, including the UN European
Office, yet another reduction in staff is being carried out. On the one hand,
such measures are inevitable and necessary. Member States are demanding that
the UN be more effective and ensure better value for money invested. For
example, the European Office has to print and distribute millions of pages of
documentation each year in the six working languages of the UN. To reduce
this paper avalanche and cut related costs, an electronic information
dissemination system is being established at the European Office. On the other
hand, the workload that UN agencies have to perform is constantly growing, so
it is not easy to implement cuts and savings in practice.

International Geneva, like the entire UN system, is going through a time of
reform. This is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process that requires a
well-thought-out, focused strategy. Naturally, the support of Member States is
a key element in this process. In general, at the macro level, States certainly
provide such support. At the same time, at the micro level, when it comes to
practical steps, assistance from States is not always adequate. And it stands to

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