Editorial

All in the same boat!

Ceilings falling down, people crowded in dark corridors, escape staircases that look as though you’re descending into a mine pit, a peeling façade, and in front of the building three workers with a wheelbarrow and two shovels, digging a hole. No, this is not a description of a slum in some remote suburb; it is just a recent picture of UN Headquarters in New York. It is in this building which is falling apart that the world most pressing problems are dealt with.
A number of "solutions" have been proposed. The UN Administration has prepared a vast project which includes the construction of a small building next to the current one, at the corner of 42nd Street and First Avenue, to relocate part of the secretariat. This project has however been rejected by the city of New York because it would destroy a small unoccupied basketball playground essential for the New York teenagers. There are other projects, such as housing the UN in the future Liberty tower to be built on the site of the World Trade Center just because nobody wants to rent any space in the tower. Others suggest moving to Queens just opposite Manhattan, or to have a wandering UN which would go from one conflict area to another so that delegates would have a vested interest in solving these conflicts.
To save our New York colleagues, UN Special created its own working group, which has come up with simple clear-cut recommendations. The former cruise ship "France" which became the "Norway" is for sale for $1. Why not buy it? UN Special is ready to co-finance the purchase together with the 192 UN Member States. The secretariat and delegations would thus be sailing together. That would enable all of us to be in the same boat, to transport the UN to all conflict areas and would promote staff mobility.