Ch. 8 - A trip to Napoli and the United Nations
Naples -> Sorrento -> Geneva
After leaving Maryam, Kedhar, and Talia’s goodbye party on Friday, Kyle and I flew to Naples to celebrate my birthday weekend. We stayed at a bed and breakfast situated near the water. The location had relatively few tourists; one side of our building was lined with local cafés and restaurants and the other ran alongside the port that opens up to the Napoli gulf. After freshening up and grabbing dinner at a restaurant just outside our door, we walked along the water until we came across a group of neon-lit bars and food vendors, each with music pouring out of amps in competition with its neighbor bars. We relished in the ambiance for a couple of hours before returning to the BnB.
On our second day, we walked around the city with our jaws dropped at the stark contrast between the prices in Naples and Geneva. We took a tour of the Catacombs of San Genarro, where the chilly underground burial sites were painted with frescos dating back to a time before Christianity was prevalent in the region. The tour was a great escape from the Napoli heat and humidity, which had Kyle and I begging for mercy and promising never to speak ill of the temperature in Geneva again. As the sun reached its peak, we decided to follow the example of the locals and spend those grueling hours indoors taking a nap.
On Sunday, we spent the day in Sorrento, eating freshly caught seafood and exploring the streets of 
the cliffside town. In the afternoon, we paid a 5 euro entry fee to one of the private beaches that lined the shore. We spent the evening floating in the Mediterranean, never shutting up about how much easier it is to swim in the sea than the fresh water of Geneva’s lakes and rivers. Despite Italy’s magic, however, Monday morning we were ready to return “home” to Switzerland. Taking the train directly from the airport to the IBJ office, I started the work week by continuing research for the India Defense Manual and completing a side project that Karen, IBJ’s CEO, had requested my help on.
Exhausted from the early morning travels, I spent Monday evening at a friend’s flat watching a comedy special and eating pineapple pizza (knowingly blaspheming the entirety of the city of Naples). Around 9 PM, the day’s bleak weather forecast was realized as Geneva was covered in a much-needed downpour. We danced on my friend’s partially-covered porch while being only partially protected from the storm. I ended the night damp and delirious, excited that tomorrow’s work day would be interrupted by an office-wide field trip.
Visiting the United Nations + Goodbyes
The next day, IBJ interns and staff members met at the United Nations to attend a group tour of the premises. This United Nations facility is located at the historic Palais des Nations, originally built for the League of Nations in the 1930s. We were able to see the large conference room where the Human Rights Council meets, adorned with a newly renovated ceiling gifted to the center from Spain. On the second floor of another room, we listened in to discussions occurring on the bottom floor, using headsets that allow translators can speak directly to diplomats. In this particular meeting, a group of fifty diplomats were discussing the dangers posed by landmines used in combat, specifically in relation to civilian casualties and injuries. Our guide then brought us through different corridors decorated with gifts from varying member states.
After the official tour, we were given an “insider’s tour” from Sanjee, who spent years coming to these offices as a correspondent to the UN from the Asian Legal Resource Centre. He showed us the lounge area outside of the conference rooms where, per his words, the majority of deals between diplomats are made. Afterwards, he brought us into an empty conference room, and a group of interns sat at the front podium to experience the room from the viewpoint of a council member. Some interns had at the cafeteria and took pictures of the famous Allée des Nations and the Broken Chair, after which everyone returned the office. After work, I met up with Kyle and Eoin at Le Barje to bid Eoin farewell—on Thursday, he would be joining the list of departed IBJ interns. After chatting over a pitcher of sangria, we decided to turn in early after the long day.
Midday Wednesday, the office got together to say goodbye to Eoin. It was a traditional IBJ goodbye party, filled with a poem reading by Karen and a compulsory “go around and say your favorite memory of ____”, followed with music, snacks, and Eoin’s performance of magic tricks (which replaced the usual karaoke). After work, I met my friend Ellen at her house to eat dinner before walking to the aqueduct over Jonction. It was my first time seeing the convergence of the Arve and the Rhone from above, and the view was even more dramatic than it is from the Point. We did what has become my favorite pastime in Geneva—sitting alongside the river in the evening as the sun sets over the city, talking to friends and sharing a bottle of wine. Once it became dark, I got a kebab at El Baraka (the best hole-in-the-wall kebab in Geneva) and made my way home.
The remainder of the week, I started working on the second half of my chapter for the India Defense Manual. Still centered around the attorney-client relationship, the chapter goes into depth about how counsel should respond to clients that are a part of a special population. Mainly, the chapter focuses on juveniles, women, the mentally ill, LGBTQ+, and clients who have been subjected to torture. There are no widespread manuals or instructions disseminated by Indian bar associations in regards to how vulnerable client situations should be handled, so a lot of the content I am adding to these sections are taken from other IBJ resources. Each of the subsections goes into detail about how interviews should be conducted differently with each type of client, so these are likely the sections I will be working on in the following weeks until the end of my internship.
Thursday after work, the entire office met at Perle du Lac to have a picnic and celebrate the departure of Ella, our program associate, who is leaving to work at an NGO that provides assistance to refugees in Greece. We were also saying goodbye to James and Carmen, two of my fellow interns. All three of these people have been an incredible light in our office, and will be greatly missed for the remainder of my time here.
