UN and International Red Cross in Geneva
On monday I took a nice 3 hour train ride into Geneva. The swiss countryside is beautiful. Within the first hour I already understood why there is so much cheese, white wine and wheat beer in Zurich. One nice side effect of the trip was that I left behind the storm in Zurich for clear skies in Geneva. It was a little odd to get out of the train at another city in the same country and suddenly find everyone speaking French. I left the hauptbahnhof but I arrived at the Gare.
I took a cab to the UN as I wanted to make sure I caught the last tour before my train back. The UN office in Geneva is a lot older than the New York offices and is more focused on the research and support activities and less on the politics,which mostly happen in New York. The building was the home for the League of Nations, before it was dissolved and drawn into the UN. There are all this great 1920s and 30s architecture and art around the building. The chamber where they outlawed the antipersonal landmine was done by a great Spanish artist, who worked in the themes of freedom, technological advancement, economic prosperity and peace into giant murals throughout the room. The ceiling has a picture of five figures, representing the five continents, all grasping hands in solidarity. It was really moving.
The book store had a great variety of international statistics. I browsed for about a half hour through topics that are so dull that they would make your eyes roll into the back of your head. Selected studies in comparative industrialization strategies in developing countries in East Asia was one of the medium sized titles for these reports. I picked up a book on the WTO and it's role in global governance before I left. The WTO was once a part of the UN but broke away when it realized it had actual power and could enforce decisions with real consequences.
Across from the UN office in Geneva was the Museum of the international Red Cross. It is a small museum, but the story it tells is very moving. There is a huge library of index cards, each one representing a prisoner of war from WWI. They have the care packages delivered to WWII POWs. The most moving display is a room covered with pictures of orphaned children from the genocide in Rwanda. Their latest display was a collection of photographs from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, which were hard to look at. They presented the more graphic images of the war that you don't see on CNN, including people cleaning up bomb sites and a half melted Iraqi soldier. Seeing these images, you just wish that the whole conflict could end.
It was a bittersweet experience to see the hope that the UN represents and all the atrocities the red cross has intervened in. With the nation state weakening in the face of international companies, there is a need to develop a functioning system of international governance to guarantee that the emerging global marketplace protects individual rights. Terrorism is in effect an attempt to rebuke globalization. Extremist religious sects don't want to be part of a global community, they don't want to accept the cultural changes necessary to compete in the new global economy, and they resent the poverty that has resulted from their refusal to adapt. China and India were also impoverished, but were willing to change are flourishing in the new global market. In part the difference may be due to the abundance of oil in the middle east. There is no reason to adapt when you have a steady stream of income from natural resources. Unfortunately, those resources have been controlled in such a way that few people share in their revenues. China and India have not had the same store of natural resources to derive an income, they have had to rely on productivity and innovation to compete. But I digress. In general the global economy is not just about sharing market revenues across more places. Every country that increases its ability to compete grows the market which helps everyone. If we can bring the rest of developing world up to speed while averting the looming energy crisis with more investment in alternative fuels, quality of life world-wide should improve.
I took a cab to the UN as I wanted to make sure I caught the last tour before my train back. The UN office in Geneva is a lot older than the New York offices and is more focused on the research and support activities and less on the politics,which mostly happen in New York. The building was the home for the League of Nations, before it was dissolved and drawn into the UN. There are all this great 1920s and 30s architecture and art around the building. The chamber where they outlawed the antipersonal landmine was done by a great Spanish artist, who worked in the themes of freedom, technological advancement, economic prosperity and peace into giant murals throughout the room. The ceiling has a picture of five figures, representing the five continents, all grasping hands in solidarity. It was really moving.
The book store had a great variety of international statistics. I browsed for about a half hour through topics that are so dull that they would make your eyes roll into the back of your head. Selected studies in comparative industrialization strategies in developing countries in East Asia was one of the medium sized titles for these reports. I picked up a book on the WTO and it's role in global governance before I left. The WTO was once a part of the UN but broke away when it realized it had actual power and could enforce decisions with real consequences.
Across from the UN office in Geneva was the Museum of the international Red Cross. It is a small museum, but the story it tells is very moving. There is a huge library of index cards, each one representing a prisoner of war from WWI. They have the care packages delivered to WWII POWs. The most moving display is a room covered with pictures of orphaned children from the genocide in Rwanda. Their latest display was a collection of photographs from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, which were hard to look at. They presented the more graphic images of the war that you don't see on CNN, including people cleaning up bomb sites and a half melted Iraqi soldier. Seeing these images, you just wish that the whole conflict could end.
It was a bittersweet experience to see the hope that the UN represents and all the atrocities the red cross has intervened in. With the nation state weakening in the face of international companies, there is a need to develop a functioning system of international governance to guarantee that the emerging global marketplace protects individual rights. Terrorism is in effect an attempt to rebuke globalization. Extremist religious sects don't want to be part of a global community, they don't want to accept the cultural changes necessary to compete in the new global economy, and they resent the poverty that has resulted from their refusal to adapt. China and India were also impoverished, but were willing to change are flourishing in the new global market. In part the difference may be due to the abundance of oil in the middle east. There is no reason to adapt when you have a steady stream of income from natural resources. Unfortunately, those resources have been controlled in such a way that few people share in their revenues. China and India have not had the same store of natural resources to derive an income, they have had to rely on productivity and innovation to compete. But I digress. In general the global economy is not just about sharing market revenues across more places. Every country that increases its ability to compete grows the market which helps everyone. If we can bring the rest of developing world up to speed while averting the looming energy crisis with more investment in alternative fuels, quality of life world-wide should improve.
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