The UN News Centre has written, in an article about the UN’s Holocaust Remembrance day commemorations on 29 January, that: “Ceremonies were held in other UN outposts around the world. ‘The sheer dimensions of the organized murder of Jews and others, the very scale of the systematic attempt at destroying an entire people, make the Holocaust a unique calamity that cannot – and should not – be forgotten, let alone denied,’ the Director-General of the UN Office in Geneva told a ceremony at the Palais des Nations.”
So, the UN office in Geneva is an “outpost”. It seems that the UN’s Department for Public Information (DPI) which runs the News Centre, has not suggested to its own staff that everything outside UNHQ/NY might not actully be correctly considered as an “outpost”, “foreign”, and “overseas”.
It is true that the UN Office in Geneva is boring and provincial, and a den of iniquity perpetrated by too many people who never worked at the center of the universe in New York, and who therefore don’t know very much about what the UN really is, or ought to be.
But the UN Office in Geneva is the UN’s second headquarters — and not an outpost.
(A previous head of DPI, from Japan actually, once came to Geneva and called it a “field office”, I do recall…)
The same UN News letter article on the Holocaust commemorations also said: “On Friday the General Assembly condemned without reservation any denial of the Holocaust, with only Iran publicly disassociating itself from the consensus resolution.”
The focus on Iran this year was urged, if not organized, by the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch (which watches out mainly for Israel, but also takes action on some other human rights issues). UN Watch did a significant amount of mobilization urging that Iran be specifically denounced for its President’s remarks questioning the Holocaust narrative. They sent a letter urging SG BAN to name Iran explicitly in his video-taped message aired in NY and in Geneva (as he was in Africa at the time). UN Watch may have been disappointed by BAN’s statement, but not by DPI!
DPI put at the top of its special holocaust website a quotation from a remark made by SG BAN at his first press conference at UNHQ/NY after coming to office:
“Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust, is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any State or people. I would like to see this fundamental principle respected both in rhetoric and in practice by all the members of the international community.” — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Press Conference SG/2120, 14 December 2006
As part of its grass-roots mobilization efforts, UN Watch has a Click button on its website, with which viewers can “Urge the UN to
Condemn Iran — It’s time for the world body’s leadership to tell Iran to stop Holocaust denial and incitement to genocide.” [Click here] “Take Action Now!” http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=3421789