facilitating multilateralism at UN Geneva

behind the scenes

A photo showing a conference room with rows of empty desks and chairs. A dog is sniffing one of the chairs, while a Security and Safety Service officer stands nearby.

The Security and Safety Service’s DetEx K9 Unit searches a conference room to ensure it is safe for meeting participants.

UN Geneva is one of the largest conference centres in Europe. In 2022, we organized nearly 8,000 meetings. About 4,500 were in-person meetings and about 3,400 hybrid, with the rest held virtually. Nearly 40% of the meetings included interpretation services.

A wide range of teams work together at UN Geneva to ensure that meetings, conferences and events run smoothly. Here are just some of the people who work behind the scenes to make multilateral diplomacy at UN Geneva a success.

1. before a meeting 2. in the lead-up 3. during the meeting

preparations for each meeting begin weeks or even months in advance.

A woman sits at a desk in an office space.

A staff member from the Division of Conference Management answers client queries about Indico, the portal that people use to register for meetings and events at UN Geneva.

A woman sits at a wooden table using a laptop, while two men are on either side of her, watching. Behind them are a white board, a red glass whiteboard with writing and a poster with Indico branding.

A team from the Division of Conference Management creates a meeting on Indico.

A woman sits at a desk in an office with a computer.

A woman sits at a desk in an office with a computer with two monitors. On the left monitor is a word document while on the right monitor is a page from the UN Geneva website.

A Russian translator (left) and an English editor (right) work on documents for a meeting to ensure that they are of the highest quality.

Two men work at a desk; one man is sitting while the other is standing. They are working at a computer and looking at several monitors. There is also a laptop on the desk.

A translator and reviser translate meeting documents into Spanish, one of the UN’s six official languages.

A woman sits at a desk in a large office space. She is working at a computer and pointing at the screen.

A graphic designer works on a report.

A man sits at a desk, working on a computer. On the computer screen there is a document open.

A desktop publishing specialist prepares the layout of a document for a meeting.

A photo taken from above of a man operating a large printing machine in an open space. He is looking at a large document on the printing machine.

In UN Geneva’s print shop, a staff member oversees the printing of documentation and publications.