UN Headquarters: Elyx is in New York to celebrate the UN’s 70th anniversary!

The day that Elyx has been looking forward to has finally arrived!

After 70 days of travelling around the planet, visiting so many UN missions and meeting so many UN colleagues around the world, Elyx has finally arrived at UN Headquarters in New York City.

Elyx cycles to the UN Headquarters (Photo credit: United Nations)

Elyx is giddy with joy and especially now that Elyx has learnt so much about the work of the UN, to see it all in real time is so exciting.

Elyx reads about UN’s history (Photo credit: United Nations) 

As Elyx takes a tour of the historic building and walks past famous sculptures, the digital ambassador is elated. Elyx takes peeks into conference room, meetings, consultations and other gatherings, and is impressed by the number of different subjects that is being dealt with on every floor.

Elyx admires the Non-Violence sculpture and meditates on its symbolic meaning (Photo credit: United Nations)

Elyx has been enriched by the people that it has met. Local populations of course, who have always welcomed the ambassador with open arms and a smile and shared their colourful traditions, in spite of the hardship that some of them are facing. Also, it goes without saying, UN staff and volunteers, who have taught Elyx about the issues that the UN deals with and how they address daunting challenges.

Thanks to their dedication, the world today is a better place than 70 years ago in so many areas: from human rights protection to peacekeeping and the fight against climate change, to mention but a few. Elyx is impressed by their deep commitment to the ideals of the organisation that they represent, which often results in them going as far as endangering their life to uphold these values, never losing heart in the face of adversity.

Elyx has fun at the UN General Assembly (Photo credit: United Nations)

The digital ambassador has also been delighted to see that the UN not only provides aid when a crisis strikes. Its engagement is lasting and includes capacity building, long-term recovery and the empowerment of national governments and local communities in order to promote bottom-up sustainable solutions.

The way ahead is long and rife with difficulties, Elyx knows that much still needs to be done and the United Nations is not a panacea for all the evils. After all, as former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld once said, “the United Nations was not created to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell”. What Elyx is convinced of, however, after having travelled to the four corners of the earth, is that a world without the UN would me a much worse place. Elyx fully agrees with Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon statement: “Seven decades after its founding, the United Nations remains a beacon for all humanity.”

Elyx knows that hard and steady work bears fruit (Photo credit: United Nations)

What now? Elyx wonders. Thinking of the future of the UN and Agenda 2030 with its Sustainable Development Goals, the digital ambassador realises that in order to thrive, the world has to stand united. As former Secretary-General Kofi Annan once said, “More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that (…) is why we have the United Nations”.

Elyx feels hopeful and wishes happy anniversary to the United Nations, to the people who work for them and to us all because, in the end, we [are] the peoples of the United Nations. (Charter of the United Nations: Preamble)

Elyx considers a swim in the East River (Photo credit: United Nations)

More Photos of Elyx in the United States (Full Flickr Gallery)