The future of International Geneva lies in New York
Dear reader,
This week International Geneva’s gaze is firmly fixed on New York, where the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly opened on Tuesday. Once again, the 193 member states of the organisation are meeting in a climate of tension, marked by wars, in Ukraine and the Middle East in particular, as well as by the financial crisis that the UN is going through.
There are many burning issues with potentially profound implications for Geneva like the UN’s budget, plan for reforms and the succession of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres whose second and final term of office is coming to an end at the end of the year. While the UN’s European office is often described as the “engine room” of the multilateral system, it depends on the political decisions taken at the UN headquarters in New York.
In recent years, International Geneva has suffered greatly from the disengagement of the United States, followed by other members, particularly European countries. Last week, the Swiss government published its latest statistics to quantify the impact of budget cuts more precisely.
Since the return of Donald Trump as president, more than 2,800 jobs have been cut in Geneva-based organisations, i.e. about 11% of the 25,696 jobs recorded in 2024. The drop is significant, although not as heavy as feared, the Swiss foreign ministry notedExternal link. However, these figures do not include NGOs, which have also suffered from the drop in funding, or the job cuts carried out abroad by Geneva-based organisations.
In a worrying sign of the marginalization of the UN, Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is on American soil this week to meet his counterpart in Washington, has not planned to speak at the marbled rostrum of the General Assembly. In this context, the future of International Geneva will depend more and more on the support of small- and medium-sized powers. They are also the ones who have the most to lose in a world where the law of the strongest reigns.
Do you have any questions on this topic? As always, you can write to me at dorianvalere.burkhalter@swissinfo.ch
Best regards,
Dorian Burkhalter
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