Conference Management Service (Vienna)
About us
Conveniently located at the heart of Europe, Vienna is voted year after year as the most liveable city in the world. Needless to say, delegates and stakeholders are always happy to attend conferences at the United Nations Office at Vienna, established in 1980 as one of the four headquarters of the United Nations. Aside from the charms of the Austrian capital and the state-of-the-art facilities of the Vienna International Centre, Member States and secretariats routinely praise the support provided by the Conference Management Service of the United Nations Office at Vienna. Following General Assembly resolution 49/237, the Service is mandated to provide unified conference services to the United Nations entities in Vienna, as well as other international organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. The Service fulfils its mandates through the expertise and skills of just over 180 staff members, who comprise the Planning, Coordination and Meetings Section; the Interpretation Section; and Translation Sections for each of the six official languages. They include meetings and documentation planners, interpreters, translators, editors, graphic designers, publishers, librarians and technicians.
Our work
Staff of the Conference Management Service work tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to enable deliberations and support the work of the Vienna-based organizations on some of the most important topics on the world agenda: terrorism, cybercrime, trafficking in persons, crime prevention and criminal justice, corruption, narcotic drugs, atomic energy, outer space affairs, trade law, and industrial development. Translators produce around 21 million words per year of highly technical and legal texts in all six official languages; interpreters service over 2,000 hours of meetings annually; and publishers deliver a wide array of environmentally-friendly products featuring cutting-edge designs. Meetings planners schedule and service up to 6,000 meetings per year. Most of these are held in on-site facilities, such as the M-Plenary, which can seat up to 650 attendees; others may be convened in cities across the globe. For example, the Crime Congress – the world’s largest forum on crime – is held every five years in different host countries and is fully serviced by the Service. At all conferences throughout the year, big and small, the Service is committed to mitigating the environmental footprint of its operations. The printing and publishing services have maintained certification in the ISO 14001 environmental standard since 2011.