When the world's wealthiest states sit down at the table, the host first boards up its shop windows. Geneva is bracing for a wave of around 50,000 demonstrators tied to the G7 summit, held in the French town of Evian, about 50 kilometres from the city. Hundreds of luxury shops, banks, hotels and stores have shielded their windows with plywood - a picture that says everything before the protest even starts.

The irony is thick. France did not allow demonstrations near the summit's actual location, so the organisers rerouted the protests into neighbouring Switzerland. In other words, the powerful meet in one place and send the anger off into someone else's backyard. Central Geneva is on the highest alert, and from Monday the airport becomes the entry point for world leaders and their delegations.

The fear is not unfounded. The city remembers well what happened at the 2003 Evian summit, when protests in Geneva ended in vandalism, smashed storefronts and damage running into the millions. So now it is playing it safe - plywood over every window, police on every corner, the city turned into a fortress so that a handful of leaders can talk in peace.

And behind the whole scene sits a question the Balkans understand well. When the governments of the wealthiest have to hide behind boarded-up windows and police cordons from their own citizens, what does that say about the gap between those who decide and those in whose name they supposedly decide? The G7 has talked about stability and prosperity for years, yet that very conversation now needs a plywood wall to hold. Perhaps that is the most honest image from the meeting - not what they say at the end, but the boarded-up windows before the start.