Captions
“The United Nations was not created to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell”. Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld, former UN Secretary-General
« The official languages used at the United Nations are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish »
« The UN was created after World War II to provide an international forum that would develop positive relationships between countries, promote peace and security around the world, and establish international cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems »
« The Secretariat is the administrative center of UN operations, and is headed by the Secretary-General, who is the director of the United Nations »
« Not having many common areas, the cafeterias are the only places in most buildings where staff interact with each other »
« Posters in the work space: are they a reminder of why people are doing what they are doing? Do people need to regain focus of their mission? Should basic traits unite us all? »
« Sport and play are human rights that must be respected and enforced worldwide; sport is recognized by the UN as a high-impact tool in humanitarian, development and peace-building efforts »
« The Security Council is responsible for establishing and maintaining international peace. Its main purpose is to prevent war by settling disputes between nations. The Security Council has 15 members. There are five permanent members: the United States, the Russian Federation, Britain, France, and China; and 10 temporary members who serve two-year terms »
« According to one’s position, they are rewarded squared meters. The higher in rank, the more square meters one is awarded. It appears to be challenging to erase (or mask) hierarchical divisions »
« The General Assembly is the world's forum for discussing matters affecting world peace and security, and for making recommendations concerning them. It has no power of its own to enforce decisions. It is composed of the 51 original member nations and those admitted since, a total of 192 »
« The UN as an organization modernises slowly, so do the work environments »
« Obvious characteristic in most UN buildings are the lack of day light, the big amount of copy machines and large quantities of paper »
« Within the UN there are several debates going on about renovating buildings. The question arises whether individual offices should be transformed into open plan spaces. One counter argument is the lack of personal space »
« Every unit of a UN agency is specialised in a specific topic producing reports and most of the reports are still published hard copy. This requires a large storage spaces »
« Each of the 193 Member States of the United Nations is a member of the General Assembly. States are admitted to membership in the UN by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council »
« Spending the better part of their life at work, it is understandable that staff personalise their cubicles »
« Due to security it may be difficult to enter UN buildings, once inside one can move rather freely »
« As a world capital of Diplomacy, United Nations Office in Geneva hosts around 8,000 meetings every year, making it one of the busiest conference centers in the world »
« Hard copy archives are a common part of the UN workspace environment »
« Because of the individual work units people are free to organise their offices in the way they want »
« The Universal declaration of the Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, is the world’s most translared document. It has been translated into 298 languages and dialects »
« The decoration sytle of most of the meeting rooms is classic. Some of the meeting rooms are located in UN buildings which belong to the city of Geneva »
« Worldmaps and posters of humanitarian campaigns are aplenty inside the various UN offices »