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The spirit of Geneva
Traz, Robert de
Traz, Robert de
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Abstract
The United Nations turned eighty in June 2025. This milestone marks the end of a founding generation. It calls for renewal. For reform. After more than eight decades of a multilateral order built on the rule of law and international law, the balance of power is shifting. The rise of imperial powers and the growing fragility of smaller nations—who know they can disappear—signal a profound rupture. This transformation unfolds within a broader upheaval: the limits of the Western neoliberal economic model imposed hegemonically after the fall of the Berlin Wall; the internal tensions of liberal democracies, both in their ability to organize political power and to inspire other nations; and, more deeply still, the erosion of what was once believed to be an inseparable bond between liberal economics and liberal democracy. At the same time, the revolution of artificial intelligence places humanity at the threshold of new technological powers, a new form of civilization or its possible eclipse. In moments of upheaval on such a scale, societies return to the matrices that shape their identity and sense of belonging. The Spirit of Geneva is one of them. Forged by Calvin’s Reformation in the sixteenth century, Rousseau’s Social Contract in the eighteenth, and Dunant’s humanitarian vision in the nineteenth, it expresses a desirable continuity: a Geneva that reflects on the timeless values of multilateralism before hosting them; that invents a method—the Spirit of Geneva—to embody it in the governance of its own territory before it extends beyond its borders; a city that serves as its living laboratory, continually reinventing it whenever history demands it. This book of Robert de Traz, written 1929, is republished in 2026, with a new Preface and a new Introduction, by Geneva Agape Foundation and One Society Foundation as start of the project “The Spirit of Geneva for a New Multilateralism”.
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Book
Date
2026
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9783907891001 (web)
9783907891018 (print)
9783907891018 (print)
DOI
10.58863/20.500.12424/4321302
Copyright/License
Copyright 2026 Geneva Agape Foundation and One Society Foundation
The electronic version of this book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NCND 4.0). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.