This article is a very accurate depiction of the UN in Geneva based on my experience there. I was working much higher up the food chain, not an intern, but the experience was the same. You have a few true believers trying to get things done surrounded by a vast sea of bureaucrats, a significant fraction of which are corrupt, with no obvious skills nor offering even a pretense of doing useful work for anyone.

It makes the most deadwood-collecting US government bureaucracy (I've worked there too) seem almost startup-like by comparison.