Page 321 - 100 Reflections that Crafted Geneva International_V-Petrovsky_private special edition

Bringing the Concept to Life

Geneva. In addition, the Palais des Nations will host next year's annual
ECOSOC session and the year 2000 Social Summit. The United Nations
Office in Geneva also welcomes the suggestion of the Swiss Government to
hold the forthcoming Conference on the illicit traffic of weapons.

Technological innovations have added a new flavor to conference services
- the geographic scope of which is no longer limited to Geneva-based meetings.
Remote translation and text-processing for conferences held outside Geneva
provided the opportunity this year for meetings held in Bonn, Buenos Aires,
Dakar and Rome.

In the field of operational activities that are traditionally strong in Geneva,
the reform brings further consolidation in five major areas: the promotion of
human rights and humanitarian assistance; economic, trade and development
activities; science and technology; disarmament negotiation and research and
training.

For example, in the humanitarian field the Geneva-based office of the
UNHCR provides refugee assistance and also organizes disaster relief
programs. There are currently more than 22 million refugees in the world, of
which 6 million are in Europe. If it was not for the relief work of UNHCR, its
resettlement policies and the international norms it has helped develop, some
countries would be simply overwhelmed by the flows of millions of people
across their borders, with the resulting international disputes and grave social
and economic consequences both for the refugees and the receiving countries.

New offices of the organizations of the UN system are being established in
Geneva, for example the UN Office for Project Services which executes a wide
range of projects in the humanitarian, peace-keeping and development areas.

The international norms of behavior, of which Geneva is the major
repository, make it possible for UN Member States to make their national
decisions on the basis of correct and accurate methods based on technological
and specific information and at the same time to be guided in this decision-
making by generally accepted human values. Geneva is currently transforming
its activities from that of the collection of information to its active
dissemination- in particular by electronic means. The organizations of the UN
system in Geneva have huge amounts of data and analytical material at their
disposal. For example. WIPO is developing a new system named WlPONet
that contains over 1 million pages of documents on intellectual property issues.

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