The United Nations sits in Manhattan like a promise carved into concrete: a place where the world gathers, argues, negotiates, and, occasionally, agrees. Yet every time I walk along the East River, past that slim slab of international idealism, I feel the same quiet tension. For all its symbolism, the UN is anchored to one corner of the world.
What if it weren’t?
What if the headquarters of global diplomacy were chosen not for history, power, or post-war convenience — but for centrality?
Central to what?
“Central” is a deceptively simple word. It suggests balance, neutrality, and equal distance. But distance from what? From land? From people? From power? From flight routes? Each answer leads to a different map — and a different city.
If you center the world by geography alone, your compass drifts toward Central Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. In that framing, Istanbul still emerges like a hinge between continents — a city that has always been a crossroads rather than a destination. Standing on the Bosphorus, you feel how arbitrary borders are, how Europe and Asia bleed into one another. It is a place where the world already meets.
But geography is only one way of seeing.
If you center the world by population, the map tilts decisively east. The midpoint of humanity lies somewhere in South Asia, closer to Dhaka or Kolkata than to New York. In that world, a UN in Bangladesh or India would better reflect where most of the planet actually lives, breathes, and struggles. It would be a subtle but powerful correction: diplomacy oriented toward people, not just power.
Centrality by air — and the case for Doha
In a world stitched together by aviation, centrality becomes a matter of hours in the air.
This is where Doha becomes unexpectedly compelling.
Qatar’s capital is not geographically “center of the world” in the strictest sense — yet it functions as one in practice. Hamad International Airport has turned Doha into a meeting point between:
- Europe and Asia
- Africa and East Asia
- The Global North and the Global South
From Doha, you can reach almost anywhere efficiently. More importantly, the city has built itself around the idea of hosting the world: global conferences, mediation efforts, international sports, and cross-cultural dialogue.
A UN in Doha would say something very different from a UN in New York:
not dominance, but connectivity. Not legacy, but mobility.
There is also a symbolic argument. Doha sits in a region too often reduced to conflict headlines, yet increasingly central to global politics, energy, culture, and mediation. Placing the UN there would acknowledge the Middle East not as a problem to be managed, but as a space where the world already negotiates.
A moral geography
Yet perhaps the deepest question is not mathematical but moral.
The UN was born in the aftermath of a Western-led war and housed in a Western metropolis. That was understandable in 1945. But today? The world is different — more multipolar, more connected, more aware of its own imbalances.
Placing the UN in Addis Ababa, home of the African Union, would send a profound message: that Africa is not a periphery of global politics but one of its centers. A headquarters in Jakarta or New Delhi would similarly acknowledge the demographic and geopolitical weight of the Global South.
Doha, in this sense, would represent a different kind of statement: not “we move to the Global South,” but “we move to the global crossroads.”
The Quixotic choice
If I had to choose — not as a technocrat, but as a traveler who has felt the pulse of many cities — I would narrow it to three:
- Istanbul — the historical, cultural bridge
- Addis Ababa — the moral rebalancing
- Doha — the modern hub of movement
If forced to pick one today, I would still lean toward Istanbul for its depth of history and symbolic in-betweenness — but I would no longer dismiss Doha as merely a transit stop. It is a city that quietly reshaped how the world connects.
A UN in any of these cities would not solve our problems. No building ever could. But it would remind us, every day, that the world is not centered on any single power — only on the fragile, beautiful space where different paths intersect.
And that, in the end, is what I search for in travel: not edges, but crossings.
— Maarten
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