Geneva, sundry items

Being an ‘international’ in Geneva is like being an ‘international’ in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. (But a lot more comfortable.) It is to have that same sense of existing in a dual– local/international– universe. The two aspects of Geneva are even bilingual in the same way as Kigali: French and English, though to be honest there are plenty of Rwandais who don’t speak French at all. In both cities, a strong core of UN agencies is surrounded by a constellation of international NGOs. But there, perhaps, my analogizing should stop.
I wish more people from the US heartland– even, from the US Congress– could travel to Geneva and see the many global functions being fulfilled by the various UN agencies headquartered here…

There’s a whole portion to the northwest of the city center that I’ve walked around it quite a bit these past few days, that is an ever-growing forest of massive UN megaliths. Going up one way from my hotel to the IISS conference I would walk past, successively, the stark gray breezeblock of the HCR, the decidedly 1950s-looking tacky concrete of the ITU/UIT, the glittering blue glass topping pink granite of OMPI/WIPO, and the UN’s own stolidly classical “Palais des Nations” itself. Another route would take me by the dowdy-looking white panels of UNICEF, the cleverly suspended eco curtain walls of the WMO/OMM and the Palais, and give a distant view over to the OMS/WHO. I jogged along a lakefront trail that took me past the park-set bourgeois gentility of the massive place where GATT had it headquarters. No doubt some of those cranes swaying busily over the “foreign” part of town are even now depositing girders for the new WTO offices.
Staff members from all around the globe inhabit these offices; their acronym-heavy and generally English-language conversations dominate all the bus lines around..
Okay, I imagine from the perspective of certain US citizens– mainly, the kind who are congentitally suspicious of “the government” wherever it might raise its head– seeing the weight of these buildings, the size of their staffs, and the extent of their global reach might be quite disconcerting. (These would be the same kinds of people susceptible to the scares about “UN black helicopters” about to land on the lawns of Iowa.) But for many other Americans, who may never have been to Geneva but whose view of “the UN” is dominated by the (often true) stories about political finagling and administrative mismanagement in New York, being able to come here to this city tucked into the western end of Switzerland and seeing all the many, verty valuable functions that these UN bodies coordinate from here would be, I think, very educational.
——
The city fathers of Geneva have, indeed, sought largely to “brand” their city by making it into the world’s premier location for intergovernmental headquarters functions. (As The Hague has, for international law.) The first “international” headquarters in Geneva was that of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), founded ihere back in the early 1860s. Since then, the historic links with the Red Cross “movement”– that is, both the self-standing ICRC and the International Federation of (national) Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies– have become an important part of the city’s self-definition. You can barely walk down any of the historic streets in the center of the city without finding a wall-plaque that informs you that such-and-such a venerable city father who was on the IUCRC’s founding committee had lived there; or one of the early planning meetings of the ICRC had been held there; or whatever.
Nowadays, the ICRC headquarters is a group of eight or nine office buildings clustered onto a hillside overlooking the Palais des Nations. Vast antennas wave over the roofts there, and most of the talk in the cramped corridors is of ICRC interventions in one of the world’s hell-hgoles or another. “Nearly half of our field staff– the ‘Delegates’– are deployed in Africa these days,” one of the staff members tells me. Most of the time, the international media don’t take any notice of what is happening there at all…”
Some of the other talk there is about the ICRC’s proposed introduction of a new, additional symbol of “humanitarian immunity”– that will, once adopted, serve alongside the well-respected red cross and red crescent symbols. The ICRC people call the proposed symbol “the crystal”, though it looks more like a thick-walled red box, to me. Okay, let’s call it a crystal. What is now being discussed by the states party to the Geneva Conventions is the recognition of this symbol, too, as one that should be accorded equal respect along with the red cross and red crescent.
The idea of a new symbol goes back a long time… At the beginning, the ICRC used only the red cross on white background that has become very familiar. It was not intended as a religious symbol, but was “merely” the reverse image of the national flag of Switzerland. However, during the Russian-Turkish war of the beginning of the the 20th century, the Ottoman Turks saw the red cross symbol as very “crusader”. (Not totally surprisingly. The red cross on white is, after all, the flag of St. george and of England.) That was when the “red crescent:” was also introduced as an alternative symbol, with the meaning of humanitarian immunity.
Along the way, by somethng of a fluke, the Shah of Iran’s “Red Lion and Sun” symbol also got accepted as having equal value. Other applicants– Israel’s for the “Red Star of David– Magen David Adom” and India’s for the “Red Spinning Wheel”– were not. The states party to the Geneva Conventions (and before tem, to the Hague Conventions of 1907) said they did not want a proliferation of symbols,; but wanted a small number of symbols that would have the easiest possible international comprehension and acceptance.
As anyone who reads anything about recent Middle East politics is probably aware, the Israelis– and even more, some of their more ardent supporters in other countries– have taken the failure to accept the RSD/MDA as a sign of anti-Semitism, and have mounted various campaigns against the ICRC on this basis. (The ICRC people point out firmly that it is the states party to the Geneva Conventions that make the policy on this; and that their role is merely to implement what that government-level diplomatic consensus comes to agreement on.)
Still, over the past few years, the ICRC staff and some national governments have worked together to try to identify and win the diplomatic approval of a completely new symbol, that can be used alongside the two existing ones — though I think each state is supposed to choose just one of the internationally accepted symbols if they want to have its use honored by other countries– or might even, over time, come to replace them completely???
The “Red Crystal” is this new symbol. It has been assessed for distinctiveness and international acceptability; and a number of governments will, I believe, be proposing its adoption at this year’s assembly of states party, due for December.
If that all goes through, then I guess we will soon after start to see whether some states begin to adopt it.
There’s apparently been quite some furore in some European countries about the prospect that “they’re going to take our beloved cross symbol away from us.” ICRC people are adamant that that is not going to happen… though they certainly hope that a number of important (and perhaps also emerging) states around the world will adopt it.
At some point, who knows, maybe even the ICRC will get around to changing its name… But at least, by calling this box-type thing a “crystal”, they won’t have to change their acronym…