United Nations Centre for Urgent Environmental Assistance

The now defunct United Nations Centre for Urgent Environmental Assistance, (UNEP/UNCUEA) had a mission to "marshal" international response to man-made disasters. It was under the UN Secretariat and administrated by UNEP.

Background
The Centre operations was run by a small staff located in Geneva, in a Swiss Government Office building in Champel, and then relocated to chemin des Anémones, Châtelaine (outside the premises of Palais des Nations), within the International Environment House offices.

The short-lived Centre was created to respond to an initiative proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. Yet it never received necessary support, as being criticized by other Agencies as overlapping competences (especially the IMO and the International Atomic Energy Agency).

In a separate line of events, Mikhail Gorbachev later founded the Green Cross International, in 1993, also in Geneva.

The Centre was successful in developing a desktop Database of National Emergency Assistance Focal Points, based on Lotus Notes, as part of its Response System. Another component of the System was a non TCP/IP email system (the Internet at the time was only news), integrating Telex and Telefax communications through the UN International Computing Centre (ICC) server. The latter is incidentally located in another office area in Geneva. The Centre was also successful in carrying out an Emergency Simulation with several national parties in their different capacities; as Experts, Response Teams, etc.