Director-General's remarks at the Closing Session of the 64th Graduate Study Programme

Closing Session of the 64th Graduate Study Programme
“AI and Emerging Technologies: Realities, Risks and Opportunities”

Friday, 10 July 2026, at 3.00 p.m.
Room V, Palais des Nations

Dear students,

It is my pleasure to join you today for this closing ceremony of the 64th Graduate Study Programme (GSP). Since 1962, the GSP has brought together and trained more than 3,500 young people from over 130 countries, making it the longest-running educational initiative of the United Nations. You are the 64th group to gain first-hand insight into the work of the United Nations and International Geneva.

You were selected from almost 1,100 applicants.  Representing 42 countries across all six continents, with a majority of women in the room — a trend that has held steady across recent GSP editions and one this Organization is proud to sustain. Your backgrounds span international relations and governance to technology, law, health, and the sciences, which are highly relevant this year more than most.

This edition carried a particularly timely theme: “AI and Emerging Technologies: Realities, Risks and Opportunities.” Artificial intelligence is no longer a subject confined to computer scientists — it is reshaping labour markets, healthcare, security, and governance all at once, and the multilateral system is still learning how to keep pace with it. For the first time, GSP participants could visit the AI for Good Global Summit, at Palexpo, alongside a packed agenda of more than 20 lectures and panels, two guided tours — including at CERN — and several receptions. This week, Geneva was indeed at the epicenter of global discussions on AI and governance – perfect timing to be here!

You put that learning to work in your four working groups, each hosted by a different partner grappling with AI in practice: a Geneva-based AI neurotechnology company on AI in MedTech, the ILO on AI supply chains, the ITU on AI and youth wellbeing, and UNIDIR on AI and international security. You produced serious, policy-relevant work under real time pressure and your reports will be published on our website and added to the UN Geneva Library's digital collection — they will outlast this programme, and so should the thinking behind them.

None of this happens without support. I wish to thank the Republic and State of Geneva, the European Union Delegation, and the Wilson Scholarship, whose generosity made possible the receptions, coffee breaks, and lunches that fuelled these two weeks.

The question at the heart of your theme was never whether AI will transform the world — it is already doing that. The real question is who shapes that transformation, for whom, and under what rules. That is not a question this Organization, or any government, can answer alone. It is precisely the kind of question that needs the energy and the scepticism of your generation at the table, not on the sidelines.

As you leave Geneva, I encourage you to stay in touch — with us, and with each other. Join the GSP Alumni network on LinkedIn. Build on the relationships you have formed over these two weeks; some of you may end up working together again, in this city or elsewhere, sooner than you think. Continue pursuing worthwhile causes in your own communities and institutions. Even while the multilateral system faces severe challenges, do not lose hope — you have just spent two weeks seeing how people are striving to make things work. Keep learning and keep doing your part.

We need you. I wish you every success in your future endeavours.

Thank you.