THE HAGUE, March 26 -- That the city of The Hague was selected to house the Nuclear Security Summit 2014 should have come as no surprise, following a long international tradition of the city.

"I am very proud that we got the organization and very proud that everything ran so smoothly," said The Hague Mayor Jozias van Aartsen to Xinhua. "We got this international position since 1899 and it goes on and goes on. Five years ago we also held the international conference on Afghanistan. Those events are very important for our city."

The seat of the government of The Netherlands has been a center of worldwide administration of international justice for more than a century. It started with the Peace Conference of 1899. At that time Czar Nicholas II of Russia invited countries around the world to take part in a conference about the settlement of international disputes and the humanization of warfare.

The most concrete achievement of the conference was the creation of the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration, the first global mechanism for the settlement of disputes between states. The 1899 Convention was revised at a second Hague Peace Conference in 1907.

Not only the Permanent Court of Arbitration (1899) and the United Nations International Court of Justice (1946) and its predecessor the Permanent Court of International Justice (1922) but also the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ICTY (1993), as well as the International Criminal Court (2002) have settled in The Hague.

Since the opening of the Peace Palace in 1913, a total of around 160 organizations that are involved in peace, international law and security have established in The Hague.

"The international sector and employment will grow more and more," Van Aartsen said. "That happened in the past ten years already and it will continue. Now already 10 percent of the population in The Hague works for an international organization. All these organizations need catering and create extra work."

"Of course we cannot relax," Van Aartsen added. "We will have to work hard to stay in this position. We have to stay in touch with the United Nations and the European Union. We have to maintain our feeling with the necessity of intellectual and scientific background of these types of institutes. "