Switzerland Today
Greetings from Bern,
As fears mount of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan caused by food shortages and a lack of access to other necessities, thoughts turn to aid workers, many of whom risk their lives helping people in difficult situations. Today, on World Humanitarian Day, seven Swiss were dispatched to Haiti to help with disaster relief following last weekend’s powerful earthquake.
In the News: Criticism of yesterday’s announcement that Switzerland would not take in a larger contingent of Afghan refugees continues to rain down on the government.
- The cities of Geneva, Zurich and Bern now have joined left-leaning parties and refugee advocates in asking the Federal Council to re-think its stance.
- Swiss doctors are warning that the country’s healthcare system could soon come under intense pressure, as intensive care beds fill up with Covid-19 patients, most of them unvaccinated, and many of them young people.
- Seven specialists from the Swiss development agency (SDC) are being sent to Haiti to support local authorities dealing with the aftermath of last Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed over 2,000 people.
News of the disaster response in Haiti comes as International Geneva marks World Humanitarian Day.
The date was chosen to commemorate the bomb attack in Baghdad on August 19, 2003 that killed 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, then the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Iraq.
Picking up on this year’s theme of the climate crisis, the World Health Organisation pointed outExternal link that climate change is “a health emergency, impacting food systems, disease dispersion [and] health systems”.
Other organisations took to social media to salute colleagues in the humanitarian field working in difficult circumstances around the world. Still others paid tribute to workers who’ve died in the line of duty providing aid. According to the UN, in 2020 108 aid workers were killed, 242 wounded and 125 were kidnapped.
Campaigns for the September 23 votes on “marriage for all” and the “99% initiative” are gearing up.
Today a committee of politicians from across the spectrum spoke to the media about its support for a proposed law that would extend the right to marry to homosexuals.
“We are the second-last country in Western Europe to introduce marriage for all,” said Green Liberal parliamentarian Kathrin Bertschy. “Only Italy has not yet done so.”
Meanwhile an equally impressive alliance of political and economic figures held their own press conferenceExternal link in Bern to make their case against an initiative to tax capital gains to the tune of 150%. Right and centre-right parliamentarians joined business associations to argue that the proposal would negatively affect SMEs, start-ups, farmers and small investors.
Instead of being an effective way of redistributing wealth, as intended by the authors of the proposal, they claimed that the “99% initiative” was nothing but a “scam” that would hurt businesses.
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