UNITAR

I was introduced to Rabih El-Haddad, Director of the Division for Multilateral Diplomacy at UNITAR. The institute knew my institutional background, and my years with UNIDO mattered: I had worked inside a United Nations programme and knew how one reports, decides and moves.

What UNITAR was looking for was blockchain and Web3 expertise. The combination was the point. Many people could explain Web3, and many people knew the UN system. Fewer could do both in the same meeting.

The brief covered almost everything blockchain could mean for an institution: use cases in general, certification, a wider Web3 strategy, institutional applications, technology and provider selection, a proof of concept, identity and verifiable credentials, exploration of NFTs and tokenisation, education for the team and the institute's positioning on innovation.

The first idea, in the summer of 2022, was an NFT programme, Digital Art for Diplomacy and Peace: digital art sold to raise funds so that participants from vulnerable and developing Member States could take UNITAR’s capacity-building programmes free of charge. We worked it through with Rabih and his team and presented it to them that November.

A brief that wide is a risk in itself. An institution can spend a long time exploring a technology and end up with a report rather than a working thing.

My work started with use-case diagnosis, and the strongest case was the one closest to what UNITAR already does. A training institute issues certificates. A physical certificate, or a file standing in for one, has limits: it can be copied, it is hard for a third party to check without contacting the institution, and it does not travel well with the person who earned it.

For UNITAR the problem is sharper than for most. The institute trains diplomats and public officials, people who move between postings, countries and institutions, and whose training is part of their professional record. A credential that anyone can verify, and that stays with its holder wherever they go next, fits that audience better than a document that has to be requested from Geneva.

I introduced soulbound tokens as the answer: credentials recorded on a blockchain and bound to their holder, which cannot be transferred or sold. Around them I outlined a digital learning experience with blockchain as its entry point, so that the credential would be the visible end of a learning path rather than a technical gadget.

In 2023 the work continued through Berexia, which had employed me to carry its Crypto, NFT, SBT and Metaverse work for clients, including the training that went with it.

From there my contribution followed the order of a decision. Strategy architecture first. Then the technology recommendation, the partners and providers able to build it, and a roadmap that placed certification at the front and kept the other questions in the brief for later.

In early 2023 I built the proposal that put certification at the front: an e-learning platform with a marketplace, and blockchain credentials as the answer to fake certificates, a point Rabih wanted the proposal to address directly.

The roadmap was also a way of saying no for now. NFTs, tokenisation and a wider Web3 strategy stayed on the table, but behind a first use case that could be built, tested and judged. An institution learns more from one working pilot than from a long list of possibilities.

A blockchain certification system was developed and a functional proof of concept produced. The pilot could issue a certificate on blockchain, let anyone verify its authenticity publicly, and give the holder a portable digital credential.

The work was presented to the Director of UNITAR, with Rabih El-Haddad and his team.

Knowledge transfer was part of the mandate, not an afterthought. I delivered training at UNITAR headquarters in Geneva, so that the people who would decide on the next steps understood what they were deciding on.

The aim was simple: after the session, the team should be able to explain what a blockchain credential guarantees, what it does not, and how to question a provider who promises more.

An institution that understands the technology can judge proposals, vendors and claims on its own. That autonomy outlasts any single pilot, and the work went on to influence later initiatives at the institute.

The certification system remained a functional pilot rather than the institute’s standard system. Pilots stop for many reasons inside large institutions: budgets, mandates, priorities and the time it takes to move from a division to the whole house.

What it achieved is concrete. A United Nations training institute moved from a theoretical interest in blockchain to a working instrument it could test, show to its leadership and use to decide. For an institution, that move from theory to a functional pilot is a result in itself.