Activities of Secretary-General in Switzerland, 28 February-3 March
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, accompanied by Madam Ban Soon-taek, arrived in Geneva late in the afternoon of Thursday, 28 February, after a flight from Vienna.
On the morning of Friday, 1 March, the Secretary-General met with the heads of United Nations funds, programmes and specialized agencies and also other international organizations based in Geneva.
He then dropped by the offices of the Scale Up Nutrition Movement Secretariat before holding a town-hall meeting with staff.
The Secretary-General next visited CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where he was briefed on the centre's latest activities by the Director-General, Professor Rolf Heuer, and visited the ATLAS detector underground experimental area.
He also visited the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), which provides analysis to humanitarian and human security organizations from commercially available satellite images.
In the afternoon, the Secretary-General returned to United Nations Headquarters at Geneva for a meeting with Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and then with the President of the Human Rights Council, Remigiusz Achilles Henczel, and other bureau members. He also met with Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar, who is a Millennium Development Goals advocate and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) special envoy for basic and higher education.
The Secretary-General addressed the Human Rights Council's high-level panel discussion on human rights mainstreaming. (See Press Release SG/SM/14840) He also gave a press conference.
Next, he delivered the annual Sergio Vieira de Mello Lecture at the International Conference Centre of Geneva in honour of the former senior United Nations official who was killed with 21 colleagues in a bomb blast at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. (See Press ReleaseSG/SM/14841.)
On Saturday morning, 2 March, the Secretary-General left Geneva for Mont Pèlerin to attend a seminar with his Special Representatives from peacekeeping and political missions around the world.
While in Mont Pèlerin, he met with the United Nations and League of Arab States Joint Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi.
The Secretary-General returned to Geneva on the morning of Sunday, 3 March, and flew back to New York from there, accompanied by Mrs. Ban. They arrived in New York on the afternoon of the same day.