What comes to mind when you think of Geneva? A banking town nestled in the mountains, the city of Calvin, chocolate or gold watches, perhaps. These descriptions gloss over the reality of a major international centre commanding global authority on a dizzyingly varied agenda. Make no mistake, Geneva is poised to take on the challenges of the twenty-first century in ways that will affect the daily existence of people, rich or poor. I invite you to acquaint yourself with a city that is directing its sights towards the future. The world's gaze rightly stays fixed on New York, the titan of 8 million people. The presence at Headquarters of the major decision-making bodies ensures its pre-eminence in international relations. In comparison, Geneva, a town of 400,000 people, seems like an unlikely player in the big league, but the incontrovertible fact remains that Geneva's new era has come. In September 2000, the special Millennium Summit of the General Assembly put the Secretary-General's concern to manage globalization "with a human face" at the top of the Organization's and, therefore, Geneva's agenda.

Geneva has enjoyed over 80 years on the diplomatic stage. The United Nations predecessor, the League of Nations — a product of the tragic "Great War" — found its home here. The conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles led to the creation of the League in 1919. United States President Woodrow Wilson, the League's guiding figure, was among the leaders who considered Geneva eminently suitable due to Switzerland's involvement in international relations, which dates back to the nineteenth century. This was the world's first "great experiment" in multilateral diplomacy and collective security.

The creation of the United Nations in 1945 is considered as the second great experiment. Both the successes and failures of the League provided the principal direction and basis for the new Organization, which also came out of the ashes of war.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC ) long ago put Geneva on the map as the world capital of humanitarian acitivity. As the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC monitors with States parties the humane treatment of civilians in conflict and prisoners of war.

Present-day Geneva is a thriving hub of action in the service of humanity. Consider the following: about 3,800 people work for the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG); add to that number 4,200 staff members from five specialized agencies and 3,450 staff and diplomats working for 151 of the 189 UN Member States. UNOG is the second United Nations office after the Headquarters in New York and the world's busiest conference centre. More than 600 meetings a month bring 25,000 delegates to the city. Three types of ambassadors discharge their functions in Geneva: those assigned to UNOG, those dealing with the Conference on Disarmament, and those specializing in international trade.

Geneva's "personality" is unique; the approach is hands-on, the projects concrete and designed to have a broad impact. It serves an increasingly important operational base. In fact, then United States Energy Secretary Bill Richardson summed it up perfectly when he said that Geneva was where the United Nations did its "heavy lifting". The UN has boosted its capacity to dispatch rapid humanitarian aid since the numbers of victims of both conflict and natural disasters are increasing as never before. When tragedy strikes, organizations such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs act speedily to move the key players and resources where they are urgently needed. In economic development, the UN Conference on Trade and Development represents the concerns of developing nations, and particularly the least developed countries, to extend the benefits of globalization as equitably as possible.

Geneva's standard-setting work has improved the lot of people everywhere. Our basic assumptions about acceptable working conditions, such as paid holidays and the right to sick leave, are the result of the efforts of the International Labour Organization. The World Intellectual Property Organization has elaborated laws of copyright and protection of intellectual property. The World Trade Organization, the entity that is expanding and liberalizing global trade, hardly needs introduction.

Human security will be the leitmotiv for Geneva's actions in the coming century, whether in disarmament, human rights or humanitarian action. Human survival itself is the driving force behind the Conference on Disarmament (CD). While New York retains the consultative bodies in disarmament matters, the nuts and bolts of treaty-making is the CD's work. Away from the media's glare, the multilateral and bilateral agreements produced have saved millions of lives and spared our environment untold damage and contamination. The CD is the international community's single multilateral negotiating forum for disarmament agreements. All the militarily significant States are represented in this 66-member body. It concluded two major arms limitation treaties in the last decade: the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1992 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, which banned all nuclear testing.

Geneva will be at the epicentre of global arms-control negotiations in 2001. Specifically, it will be the year of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), since the Special Conference to adopt a verification protocol to BWC, as well as the Fifth Review Conference of States Parties to this Convention, will take place. These efforts should culminate in the establishment of a new compliance-monitoring body that will build confidence in the effectiveness of prohibiting "germ warfare". Other negotiations in 2001 will focus on the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), or so-called Inhumane Weapons Convention, restricting their use. The CCW Review will also consider outlawing excessively injurious weapons from being deployed in war.

Geneva must now forge closer links with the new actors in international relations. Diplomacy is carried out in a number of ways: conference diplomacy, for example, by the CD; by the Director-General himself; and by his increasing initiatives to expand links with regional entities. UNOG is collaborating more closely with regional intergovernmental organizations, such as the Organization for Security in Europe and the Council for Europe, within the context of the process of informal tripartite consultations. UNOG has also bolstered cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Organization of Black Sea Economic Cooperation. A substantive dialogue is also developing with the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Organization of African Unity.

Since the UN is actively strengthening ties with civil society, UNOG is interacting with important sectors such as parliamentarians, in particular the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union, academics and the business community. Almost 2,000 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have established offices here or accredited representatives to UNOG. Human rights NGOs, for example, can lobby before the human rights machinery at Geneva. One such group is the world's indigenous people.

Geneva is also a data-gathering and knowledge centre in areas such as good governance. It offers a consultation machinery for Governments, a veritable tool for development at their disposal. Three research institutes and 5 of the 17 specialized agencies of the UN system are located in Geneva. In future, the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo will draw on this pool of expertise for its research projects. June 2000 saw the launching at the Palais des Nations of the first "Research and Policy Dialogue", which was co-chaired by the UNOG Director-General and the UNU Rector, Dr. Hans van Ginkel. Henceforth, this will be an annual event.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has defined his vision for the Organization as holistic and people-centred, one that recognizes the nexus between human rights, development and peace. Indeed, the human rights dimension is considered as "cross-cutting" or informing every aspect of the UN agenda. He has also stated the need to reinforce UN strategies to meet the tremendous humanitarian challenge of helping civilians in crisis. Future strategies in ensuring human security will focus primarily on prevention rather than reaction.

In this "virtuous" circle of interrelated action, Geneva plays a crucial role. Whereas New York remains at the forefront of political and diplomatic efforts and peacekeeping operations, Geneva not only complements peace and security mandates, but also affords expertise in conflict prevention and resolution, relief efforts and post-conflict peace-building, which supports both political processes and economic development. In other words, Geneva completes the continuum of action to prevent war and natural disasters by rooting out the underlying causes.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recognized the need to move beyond the standard-setting work of the twentieth century to the universal application of human rights norms. Peace-building — actions undertaken at the end of a conflict to consolidate peace and prevent a recurrence of confrontation — is the reason for one of the Office's most rapidly expanding areas: technical cooperation or capacity building. This can mean promoting democracy by offering electoral assistance, strengthening national institutions by reforming the judiciary, training police or criminal justice personnel, etc. Field presence, monitoring developments and providing on-the-spot advice are another major growth area.

Since an analysis of human rights trends is now crucial in early warning activities, field offices may act as the UN's eyes and ears to gather evidence or alert the world to dangerous trends. Today's human rights violations should not be allowed to fester into tomorrow's ethnic cleansing.

Related to this is the UN's mission to protect refugees and internally-displaced people. When crisis hits, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is among the first agencies on the scene. Protection can include physical and legal protection, or drafting national and international legislation. Solutions mean facilitating voluntary repatriation, asylum or resettlement in a third country. UNHCR has done much to promote international standards for humane treatment, ensure refugee rights in countries of asylum, and protect them against enforced return to danger. In 2000, UNHCR assisted 30 million people of concern.

The UN must also deliver a strong response to today's large-scale natural disasters. If the news bulletins seem grim, they are merely reflecting a reality — three times as many natural disasters occurred in the 1990s as during the 1960s. The Geneva-based International Strategy for Disaster Reduction must therefore fulfil its mandate, "A safer world in the 21st century". The World Meteorological Organization is increasingly under pressure to buttress prevention strategies by gathering and disseminating early-warning data on dangerous weather patterns using satellite technology and the Internet.

The World Health Organization (WHO) will continue its remarkable work in extending health care to all. It will surely see off polio from our list of concerns, and leprosy too. Just as it eradicated smallpox in the 1970s, WHO may well find the cure for that most indiscriminate and devastating public health phenomenon: AIDS.

Perhaps, it is the boom in information technology (IT) and the spread of Internet that will most assure Geneva's global position in the future. One of the most important stories of the twentieth century is the impact of computer and communications technology on the way we live, work and play. Individual empowerment has been one result of the IT revolution, radically altering our perceptions and expectations. Interactive communications allow us to span vast distances and to control aspects of our lives that were previously controlled by powerful institutions like Governments, corporations and the news media. These changes will gather more momentum in the new century and, at the heart of it all, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will both continue its pioneering work and help close the digital divide between the North and South.

Every four years at Geneva, ITU organizes "Telecom" — the world's largest fair for state-of-the art technology. Telecom 99 gathered together thousands of IT experts, including Bill Gates. Almost a victim of its own success, Geneva's hotels were so overbooked that executives were making day trips from as far away as London. Telecom 2003 thus promises us a vision of the cutting edge; in fact, ITU's presence in Geneva is so important that many IT companies are moving here. It would not be fanciful to project that a future Silicon Valley may one day stretch along Geneva's famous Lake shore.

I would like to conclude my tour d'horizon with the following observations: Geneva is set to meet the challenges of the next century head on; and as a source of knowledge, innovator and nerve centre for promoting all aspects of human security, its impact will be far-reaching.