Like a film set, after the actors have gone, or a dark metaphor for the future of multilateralism, the grand Palais des Nations, the UN’s European base, emptied by the Covid-19 pandemic. On Friday 13th March, the UN precipitately ended all conferences – including the Human Rights Council - and then, as of Monday 16th March, completely closed its European headquarters down. Six weeks later, empty wine bottles and cough syrup still sit on top of filing cabinets, coats hang forlorn in hallways, and notices display the menu for the week ending 20th March, the ’International day without meat’, which never got served. It’s large private gardens, peopled almost exclusively by peacocks, though ashtrays, and masks in rubbish bins, attest to furtive signs of human life, while Coronavirus warnings play on video screens to deserted corridors. The Palais des Nations, the United Nations Office at Geneva, with thousands of staff, normally a focal point for multilateral diplomacy, one of the busiest conference centres in the world, with over 8,000 meetings a year, and centre-piece of the United Nation’s biggest duty station, “where global solutions are shaped for you”, without a role, echoing with the ghosts of “the next hundred years”, and the distant footfall of a contract cleaner.