The ghosts of the Palais
He had a rosy face with pert eyes. He was extremely well dressed and could have looked like any of his colleagues except that … towards the middle of the meeting he took the floor and started to make a long speech about sugar beet crop. A very interesting intervention except that the theme of the meeting was the restructuring of the steel industry. This worthy delegate, whose origin I will not mention, spent two whole days listening to the problems of the steel industry. Nevertheless, during the adoption of the report he insisted that his piece on sugar beet be mentioned in the final document. Nobody ever figured out whether the man had attended the wrong meeting or was a converted metallurgist.
We also very often have to deal with ghost delegates who either send in their application form and never show up or show up on the first half day in order for their name to appear on the list of participants and disappear thereafter. It enables some of them to get a visa, which otherwise they would have difficulty obtaining.
During one recent meeting two delegates almost started to fight, because one of them had been mandated by a minister who had in the meantime resigned, while the other delegate had been nominated by his successor. These two “representatives” had diverging views on the same project.
The secretariat puts a lot of effort into making sure that delegates that come from all over the world have really been nominated by their governments. However due to communication delays as well as the status of some delegates it is very hard for us to throw out an intruder. At a time where security seems to be at the heart of all our activities, this antiquated system needs to be reviewed. Why not ask permanent missions to tattoo their delegates in a discreet place so that we can recognize them, or more simply to systematically check who is coming and what for.