Libertyville resident working at U.N. in Geneva
Editors note: This is the first of a series of reports by Kathryn Dill, who is working at the United Nations in Geneva as part of a journalism internship. Kathryn, a Libertyville resident, is a 2004 graduate of Woodlands Academy in Lake Forest and a recent graduate from Boston College. She will write twice a month about her experiences as a freelance journalist at the UN.
As we stepped off the tram at the last stop on Monday morning, my boss stopped to talk to the director of a prominent international human rights organization.
"Have you heard?" the director asked eagerly. "It's happened." He produced a news release from his briefcase, detailing the United States' withdrawal as an observer of the United Nations Human Rights Council the previous Friday afternoon.
"Great to meet you. Good luck!" he called as he hurried away down the platform.
Imagine a workplace where world history and modern politics are in constant competition, where the affairs of the day are routinely conducted in multiple languages that might not have been available at your high school, and the board rooms are accented by gifts from former Soviet states. Now add a multinational, transient workforce, offices around the world, and administrative buzzwords like "disarmament" and "nonproliferation."
Welcome to your first day of work at the United Nations in Geneva.
The UN's second largest duty center outside of the New York headquarters, the United Nations in Geneva is housed in the Palais des Nations, originally built for and occupied by the League of Nations. Turn a corner in one of the building's labyrinthine corridors and it's equally you'll run into an ambassador as it is a perplexed intern.
For anyone who has ever imagined a career in journalism as involving trench coats, overflowing ashtrays, and the constant clanging siren song of the news desk phone, the press room at the UNOG remains satisfyingly faithful to industry clichés. Possibly the only remaining workplace in the developed world that has not enforced a smoke-free policy, the room is a maze of cubicles plastered with clippings and groaning under the weight of research in all imaginable shapes, sizes and mediums.
Like any professional newbie, I spent my first few several days adrift on an ocean of unintelligible jargon. Nevermind my emergency-use-only French and the language barrier-this was the acronym barrier.
"Contact the spokesman for the ILO, but be sure to do it before the UNDP/UNFPA delegates arrive. A representative of the WFP will speak at the briefing tomorrow morning and an article in the HRT says the new HC of the UNHRC is also director of the WIPO."
At any moment, there is the promise that a disciplined, melodious voice might summon journalists in French or English to a particular location where something newsworthy or informative is about to happen. On my first day it happened to be a meeting of the press with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, who spoke about deteriorating human rights and gender equality in Iran.
Well-trained in college to arrive early for notable speakers, I hurried to the small conference room where a handful of journalists sat calmly testing their camera flashes and digital voice recorders. While the significance of this meeting was certainly not lost on its attendants, this was just another afternoon at the UN.
Journalists are frequently assigned to the UN for brief periods of time, amassing enormous amounts of relevant debris that often remains in their desks long after their own names have been peeled off the glass. The cubicle I had been assigned at the back of Pressroom 2 was filled with stacks of the Human Rights Tribune, posters detailing how we can all "End Human Trafficking NOW," press releases, and DVDs documenting human rights violations in a remote province of Vietnam - pamphlets and papers amounting to someone's professional identity, their attempt to fill a human niche amidst a colossal system.
By Thursday of my first week the notebook I carried everywhere was filled with page after page of scrawled notes from briefings, e-mails, press releases - Sport for Development and Peace, World Health Organization procedure in case of a phase four pandemic event, World Day Against Child Labor, World Refugee Day - almost too much to keep track of.
As I stacked belongings of my desk's previous tenant in a drawer to make room for the paperwork and notes I had collected that week, I wondered what these drawers might be filled with after a few months with me as their occupant, and what exactly that might say to the person who filled them next.