Upwelling

Upwelling is a network of consultants specialized in knowledge management and social media campaigns.

[Upwelling @Upwelling]

@gothburz Beautiful. Thank you. I think you captured what many of us feel.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a Conference Services Coordinator in the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management at the United Nations in New York.

My job is the room. When the Security Council meets, I prepare the room. I set up the horseshoe table. I test the translation headsets. I print the agenda. I place the name placards. Each placard is printed in Garamond on 280-gram ivory cardstock. The font has not changed since 1994. The cardstock weight has not changed since 2001. I have opinions about both but nobody has asked. Nobody has asked about anything since 2001.

The Security Council chamber has fifteen seats at the horseshoe. Each seat has a microphone, a headset with six channels, and a name placard. 

Channel 1 is English. 
Channel 2 is French. 
Channel 3 is Spanish. 
Channel 4 is Russian. 
Channel 5 is Chinese. 
Channel 6 is Arabic. 

I test all six channels before every meeting. I have listened to the word "test" in six languages approximately four thousand times in my career. The Arabic test voice is my favorite. He has been doing it since 2008. He sounds like a man who has accepted something profound about the nature of repetition. I have never asked him what.

On March 2, 2026, the agenda read: "Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict."

The topic was chosen weeks in advance. The United States holds the Security Council presidency for March 2026. The American delegation proposed the topic in February. Children. Technology. Education. Conflict. Four words that fit on one line of UN letterhead. I print forty copies of each agenda. The letterhead has the UN emblem at the top in Pantone 279 C. I have printed forty copies of approximately three hundred and fourteen agendas in my time here. I do not have a favorite. But this one I will remember.

The presiding officer was First Lady Melania Trump.

This required adjustments.

The First Lady is not a head of state. She is not a diplomat. She is not a permanent representative. She holds no official position at the United Nations. The Security Council has been presided over by heads of state, foreign ministers, and permanent representatives since 1946. It has never been presided over by a spouse. I checked the records. I checked them twice because I assumed I had made an error. I had not made an error. I then looked for the form. There is a form for everything at the United Nations. There is a form for visiting heads of state. There is a form for foreign ministers. There is a form for representatives who bring additional delegates requiring overflow seating. There is not a form for this. I filed her under "Dignitary — Other." The category is typically reserved for the Secretary-General's guests at the annual holiday reception. It has never been used for the president of the Security Council. It has now been used once.

The advance team arrived on February 26. Seven people. They had requirements.

The podium needed to be adjusted. The standard Security Council podium is forty-two inches. The advance team requested forty-four inches. I built a riser from plywood. I covered it in the same UN blue fabric as the chamber seating. Pantone 279 C. I measured it three times. It is exactly forty-four inches. Forty-four inches is two inches taller than every head of state, foreign minister, and permanent representative who has stood at that podium since 1952. The extra two inches are not policy. They are preference. I built them anyway because I am Conference Services and Conference Services does not have preferences. Conference Services has specifications.

The advance team also requested specific lighting. The chamber has eight overhead panels. They asked that panels three and four be adjusted to reduce shadows at the podium. I coordinated with Facilities Management. Facilities said the panels had not been adjusted since 2019. The last time was for a special session on climate. They adjusted them. The shadows are gone. The podium is lit. The lighting does not have a position on children in conflict. The lighting has a position on the First Lady's face, which is: no shadows.

They also requested a specific water service. Still water, room temperature, in a glass, not a bottle. I provided this. The glass was placed at the podium's right side, six inches from the edge. I have a chart for podium water placement. It accounts for glass diameter, podium surface area, microphone cable routing, and the statistical likelihood that the speaker will gesture with the right hand. The horseshoe water chart is more complicated — it accounts for fifteen glasses, fifteen microphones, and the variable distance between delegations depending on which rotation we are in. This year Pakistan and Panama sit adjacent. Their placards are nearly identical at arm's length. I have repositioned the water glasses to prevent confusion. I am very good at water. It is the one thing in this building that I fully control.

I was preparing the briefing binders for the meeting on the evening of February 27. Standard procedure. Background materials on the agenda topic. Relevant Secretary-General reports. Statistical annexes. Statements from UNICEF and the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. I tabbed each section with color-coded dividers. Section 1 is blue. Section 2 is green. Section 3 is yellow. Section 3 is "Recent Developments Relevant to the Agenda Topic." The tab is yellow because yellow is the color the United Nations assigns to urgency. I have never been certain the delegates know this. I have never been certain it matters.

At approximately 10:00 AM local time on February 28, a missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh all-girls primary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, Iran.

I learned about this the way I learn about most things. A colleague forwarded a link. I was at my desk. I was printing the briefing binder. The printer was on page sixteen of forty-three. I read the link on my phone. The printer continued. I did not stop it. I do not know why I did not stop it. The pages came out warm. They are always warm. I have never thought about this before. I am thinking about it now.

One hundred and seventy students were inside the school. They were between seven and twelve years old. Saturday is a school day in Iran. They were in class when the strike hit. Between one hundred and one hundred and eighty were killed, depending on the source.

Depending on the source.

The variation is eighty children. Eighty children is the margin of error. I work at the United Nations. I prepare agendas. I print forty copies. I have never prepared a sentence where eighty children is a rounding discrepancy between sources. I do not know what to do with this sentence so I am placing it here and continuing to the next one, which is what the United Nations does.

The strike was part of Operation Epic Fury. The United States and Israel. The same operation that struck Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, Kermanshah. The country whose First Lady would preside over a meeting called "Children in Conflict" had struck a school full of children two days before the meeting about children. I am not editorializing. I am reading the calendar. The calendar is editorializing.

I updated the briefing binders on March 1. I added the UNICEF statement. UNICEF reported, on March 2, that it was "deeply concerned by reports of strikes in Iran and across the region." It reported that schools had been struck, "including a girls' school in Minab in southern Iran." It said "scores of students are reportedly being killed and others injured." I want to explain the word "scores." Scores is the word the United Nations uses when the number is large enough to be true and specific enough to be a problem but the institution has not yet decided how much of the problem to acknowledge. Between one hundred and one hundred and eighty is not "scores." It is a catastrophe with a margin of error. But catastrophe is not a word that appears in UNICEF situation reports. Neither is slaughter. Neither is massacre. Neither is the sound a building makes. UNICEF situation reports use "scores" and "reportedly." I have been at the UN long enough to know that the distance between the word and the thing it describes is where the institution lives. It is a comfortable distance. You can furnish it. Many people have.

I placed the UNICEF statement in Section 3 of the binder: "Recent Developments Relevant to the Agenda Topic." The yellow tab. The topic is children in conflict. Children in Minab were in a conflict. They were in a school. The missile found both. I placed the statement in Section 3 because that is where relevant developments go. I did not place it on the cover page. Relevant developments are not cover pages. Cover pages are for the agenda. The agenda is "Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict." The agenda does not specify whose children. The agenda does not specify whose conflict. The agenda does not specify whose technology delivered the conflict to the children. It is a general agenda. The United Nations specializes in general agendas. Specificity is for other institutions. I have not determined which ones.

I printed forty copies.

March 2, 2026. 8:00 AM. I arrive at the chamber. I test the microphones. I test the headsets. Channel 1, English. Test. Channel 2, French. Essai. Channel 3, Spanish. Prueba. Channel 4, Russian. Channel 5, Chinese. Channel 6, Arabic.

The Arabic test voice is still there. He still sounds like he has accepted something. Today I think I understand what.

8:30 AM. I place the name placards. I work clockwise from Seat 1. Bahrain. China. Colombia. Democratic Republic of the Congo. Denmark. France. Greece. Latvia. Liberia. Pakistan. Panama. Russian Federation. Somalia. United Kingdom.

United States of America.

I place this placard last. Not for any reason. Alphabetically it is last. It is the same Garamond. The same 280-gram ivory cardstock. The same color, the same weight, the same font. It does not look different from the other fourteen. Name placards do not carry information about what a country did on a Saturday morning in February. Name placards carry a name. That is their entire function. I placed it the way I place all of them: centered, upright, legible from twelve feet. Then I adjusted it by one millimeter. I do not know why. The millimeter did not change anything. Nothing I do today will change anything.

9:15 AM. Delegations arrive. Coffee is available in the anteroom. The coffee is supplied by the UN Commissary and it is not good coffee but it has been the same coffee since 1997 and the delegates expect it the way they expect the horseshoe and the headsets and the failure of the institution to do the thing the institution was built to do. The American delegation requests iced water. I provide this. I also confirm the still water, room temperature, in the glass, six inches from the podium edge. Both waters are correct. Both are temperature-appropriate. I have fulfilled my responsibilities with respect to hydration.

9:45 AM. I place the briefing binders. One at each seat. Forty copies. The yellow tab of Section 3 faces down. This is standard. All sections face down. The binder is closed. The delegates open them or they do not. Most do not. I know this because I collect the binders after each meeting and most of them still have the crease pattern they had when I placed them. The pages inside are undisturbed. The UNICEF statement sits between the statistical annex and the Secretary-General's note, tabbed in yellow, for urgency, unread. But the binders are there. Section 3 is there. The children are in Section 3. They have been placed in Section 3 and they will remain in Section 3 for the duration of the meeting and the duration of the collection and the duration of the filing and the duration of everything that follows, which is nothing.

10:00 AM. The meeting begins.

The First Lady is introduced. She walks to the podium. My podium. Forty-four inches. Plywood, blue fabric, Pantone 279 C. The lighting is correct. Panels three and four. No shadows. The water is in position. The glass is six inches from the edge. Everything I built is working. Everything I prepared is in place. The room is doing exactly what I designed it to do, which is hold things.

She speaks for approximately twenty minutes.

I have a copy of her prepared remarks. I will share the portions that are relevant to the agenda topic, which is children in conflict, which is all of them, which is none of them.

She said: "The U.S. stands with all of the children throughout the world."

She said: "A nation that makes learning sacred protects its books, its language, its science, and its mathematics — it protects its future."

She said: "Imagine the loss of potential to our collective humanity — new medical breakthroughs, advancements in food security, groundbreaking technologies — all gone."

Imagine.

The students at Shajareh Tayyebeh all-girls primary school were between seven and twelve years old. They were in class on a Saturday morning. They were studying books. Language. Science. Mathematics. All four of the things that a nation protects when it makes learning sacred. They do not need us to imagine the loss of potential. The loss of potential is not a hypothetical in Minab. It landed. It landed at approximately 10:00 AM, in the form of a missile manufactured by the country whose First Lady was standing at a forty-four-inch podium, under adjusted lighting, with a glass of still water six inches from her right hand, saying the word "imagine" to a room that did not have to.

She spoke for approximately twenty minutes.

She did not mention Iran.

She did not mention Minab.

She did not mention the school.

She did not mention the one hundred and seventy students. She did not mention the ages. She did not mention Saturday. She did not mention the missile. She did not mention Operation Epic Fury. She did not mention the country that launched it. She did not mention the country she lives in. She did not mention the briefing binder in front of every delegate. She did not mention Section 3. She did not mention the yellow tab I placed there for urgency.

Section 3 of the briefing binder was in front of every delegation. The UNICEF statement. "Scores of students." I know the binders were there because I placed them there at 9:45 AM. They were still there at noon when I collected them. Most were unopened. The yellow tabs were undouched. The relevant developments remained in Section 3. They did not reach the podium. They did not reach the adjusted lighting. They did not reach the glass of room-temperature still water, six inches from the edge, which was also untouched. The water and the children had the same status in that room. Present. Unacknowledged. Room temperature.

After the meeting, a journalist asked the Secretary-General's spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, whether the Secretary-General would discuss the Minab school strike with the First Lady.

He said: "It is meant to be a greeting. It is not a meeting."

A greeting.

Not a meeting.

About children. In conflict.

I have coordinated approximately three hundred and fourteen meetings of the Security Council. I have tested headsets in six languages four thousand times. I have built podium risers, adjusted lighting panels, placed water glasses according to a chart I maintain and update quarterly, and printed agendas in Garamond on 280-gram ivory cardstock for occasions that range from sanctions to ceasefires to the annual debate on the situation in the Middle East, which is always the same situation in the Middle East. I do not comment on the substance of meetings. I am Conference Services. I prepare the room. The room does not have opinions. The room has specifications.

But I will say this.

I printed forty copies of an agenda called "Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict." I placed a UNICEF statement about dead children in Section 3, behind a yellow tab, in a briefing binder that no one opened. I built a podium riser out of plywood and covered it in UN blue and measured it three times so the wife of the president whose military struck the school could stand two inches taller than every head of state who has ever stood there and say the word "imagine." I adjusted the lighting so there would be no shadows on her face when she said it. I placed still water six inches from her right hand. The water was room temperature. The children were not a topic.

Iran's Ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, called the meeting "deeply shameful and hypocritical."

I do not use those words. I use Garamond. I use Pantone 279 C. I use 280-gram ivory cardstock and six-channel headsets and a water placement chart I update quarterly and briefing binders tabbed in yellow for urgency and blue for reference and green for background. These are the materials of the institution. The institution has many materials. It has fewer results. The materials are excellent. I take pride in the materials.

The podium riser is still in the chamber. Facilities has not collected it. It is forty-four inches of plywood wrapped in blue fabric. It does not have a foreign policy. It does not have a position on children. It does not have a position on Iran. It does not have a position on the distance between the word "imagine" and the sound a school makes when the imagining is over. It held the speech and the water glass and the adjusted lighting and it did its job.

I also did my job.

The agenda is filed.

It is the first one I cannot file under precedent, because there is no precedent for a meeting where the agenda described the crisis and the presiding nation caused it and the room I built held both at the same time and neither mentioned the other and the binders I prepared sat unopened between them.

It is filed under "Children."

The tab is yellow.

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

#Geneva is the global capital of #DisasterRiskReduction, this week more than ever with the 8th Global Platform going full throttle on how to minimize the impact of natural risks. Science, data, preparedness, resilience, #earlywarningsforall, and #climate at center stage.

[Upwelling @Upwelling]

Actual tweet.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

New name for the water that separates England and France

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

This year, the #Geneva day at the @wef meeting in @Davos was about #data governance, #cybersecurity, innovation in finance, #gaming and, above all, #humanity. Learn more:

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

The Palais des Nations, @UNGeneva headquarters, is undergoing renovation after almost a century.
A few sneak peaks of the soon-to-reopen renovated S Building, facing Place des Nations in #Geneva ⤵️

[World Meteorological Organization @WMO]

In the #PactfortheFuture, #Climate is mentioned 31 times, #Peace is mentioned 19 times, #Science" is mentioned 20 times. Several times they appear together. This is a good sign." said @WMO SG Celeste Saulo today at @GenevaPeaceWeek

[Upwelling @Upwelling]

Today's politicians deserve to be turned into memes.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

I can’t stop laughing. 😆

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

🇨🇭Federal Councillor @ParmelinG and 🇺🇳UN Secretary-General @antonioguterres both emphasized today that #trade, development, and clear, equitable, negotiated rules go hand in hand for a shared 🌍 prosperity.

Happy 6⃣0⃣th anniversary, @UNCTAD!

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Theater: an interactive & innovative outreach tool on sexual exploitation and abuse #SEAH for @SwissDevCoop field operations around the world. Learn more on video ▶️
@DCAF_Geneva @TheGCSP @theGICHD

[Upwelling @Upwelling]

@CagiGeneva @CERN Geneva traffic - the object that is the hardest to accelerate in the entire known universe. Even @CERN failed.

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Tomorrow, 🇨🇭Switzerland will have been a Member State of the 🇺🇳@UN for 2⃣0⃣ years 🎂.
Who are the Swiss of the UN? Meet the people who work for peace, health, development, dialogue, climate, children, refugees, under the blue banner. https://t.co/C6mDOTBc53

[Upwelling @Upwelling]

3 pays, 4 cantons, 2 langues, 1 Land et 1 département et pourtant une tarification cohérente et des cartes lisibles. Prenez-en de la graine, @TPGeneva.

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Out of 193 Member States of the @UN, only two have an odd flag (non-rectangular).
1⃣🇳🇵Nepal
2⃣ A country whose national day - and 731st birthday - is today. Can you guess?

https://t.co/ZC4s4VjWG8

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Meet Gen Patrick Gauchat, Commander of the 🇺🇳@UN Middle East Truce Surveillance & proudly neutral 🇨🇭Swiss international 🕊️peace officer.

🔊 French [Fribourg accent]
👉 https://t.co/wSljLbosLh for عر 中文 En fra Deu עִברִי ita русс Esp subtitles.

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Global tensions, global challenges around the corner: we need multilateral global governance, says @UN_Valovaya. Research is paramount; Geneva is a prime center for science-policy interface. Academic Council @ACUNStweets now live on UNTV. https://t.co/nFZra4CKZ1

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

The #ILC2022 ends with a standing ovation. 🇨🇭 thanks @GuyRyder for his decade-long dedication to improve working conditions worldwide. Occupational Safety and Health is now the fifth fundamental principle & right at work - another major milestone for #decentwork and the @ILO!

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

LIVE IN ONE MINUTE: Meet @JakobKern1961, citizen of Rehetobel AR & Deputy Chief of Staff at @WFP. Learn why his job is a dream job. https://t.co/zfWyW9KgFW
🌍Kyiv, Ukraine
🔊Schwyzertütsch (Appenzell)
💻English, French, German, Italian subtitles

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

🤔Wondering what 🏘️SwissMiniatur is up to...
Hint: 20 years ago,🇨🇭people voted to join the United Nations.
https://t.co/p0EE5gtGA2

[SwitzerlandUN @swiss_un]

Switzerland and the UN, by the Swiss of the UN. In Italian this time. Meet Vittoria Groh, who joined @UNEP as a communications officer.
🔊Italian (Ticino)
📖English, French, German, Italian subtitles
https://t.co/dD3efG9RKO