Geneva offices may need $1 billion repairs

The Palais des Nations is crumbling.

Built more than 70 years ago to house the UN's predecessor and then largely neglected, the grandiose structure has miles of leaky and rusted pipes and unsafe wiring, inefficient heating and cooling systems, and also suffers frequent floods.

Its Russian director-general says the historic complex urgently needs repairs that could cost more than €634 million.

Sergei Ordzhonikidze said costly renovations of the New York headquarters had distracted attention from the dilapidated state of the UN's European base which hosts 9,000 meetings a year.

"The old building is beautiful, but it is not that functional," he told Reuters in an interview in his vast office, where archaic electrical installations require him to flip 12 separate switches to turn the lights on or off.

Annexes completed in 1952 and 1973 created extra room for the 4,000 staff now working in the Palais, on issues including nuclear disarmament, human rights and humanitarian aid.

But the sprawling complex - with 37 acres of floorspace set upon a 111-acre park overlooking Lake Geneva - has never had a thorough refurbishment and falls short of modern safety and energy standards, Mr Ordzhonikidze said.

Even his ornate workspace, used by the head of the League of Nations until that UN precursor body was dissolved in 1946, lacks air conditioning, has drafty windows, and offers a view of the Palais' structural decay.

"This door leads to a balcony. If you go out on the balcony, you see that everything is rusted. It's not nice," he said from behind his desk.

UN facilities often fall into disrepair because donor governments are loathe to spend aid money on upgrading buildings at the expense of other projects such as the distribution of life-saving food and medicine.

Golding also linked the disrepair to the way the UN keeps its financial records, noting its books track only the funds received and spent, without weighing long-term capital assets such as buildings or vehicles.

The UN has committed to converting to international public sector accounting standards, or IPSAS, which would keep better tabs on assets but that change is not expected before 2010.

Mr Ordzhonikidze said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had indicated he would support renovations for Geneva once the €1.2 billion New York facelift is complete. That project, managed by a unit of the Swedish construction company Skanska, is due to end in mid-2013.

"At the moment this is a problem to have a complete renovation of the two huge centres," the former Soviet diplomat said. "For headquarters it is difficult to agree because they have their own plan, and they are afraid that the member states will not be able to support another capital masterplan that will cost maybe more than €634 million."