Chronology of a vocation

The building of International Geneva spans a century and a half. The following table summarises its principal stages.

Date	Event
1863	foundation of the committee that would become the International Committee of the Red Cross
1864	first Geneva Convention
1872	Alabama arbitration
1919-1920	League of Nations and International Labour Organization; Swiss accession
1927	Graduate Institute of International Studies
1929-1936	construction of the Palais des Nations
1946	European Office of the United Nations
1948	World Health Organization, International Telecommunication Union
1950	High Commissioner for Refugees
1954	CERN
1995	World Trade Organization
2002	Swiss accession to the United Nations
2023	first fall in more than a decade in employment at the international organisations
2025	funding freezes and restructurings

The dates for 2023 and 2025 are drawn from the sources cited in the next chapter.¹

Notes

“La Genève internationale en chiffres”, swissinfo.ch, 7 November 2024; “L’avenir incertain de la Genève internationale”, Genève attractive, 24 June 2025. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.

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