Switzerland Today
Hello from Bern,
The smell of roasted chestnuts is filling the air here in Bern as autumn temperatures set in. Have a nice weekend.
In the News: monkeypox vaccines on their way, a shortage of teachers, and a letter about Iran.
- The Swiss authorities have finally concluded a contract for 40,000 vaccine doses of monkeypox vaccine. The first doses will arrive in early November and the rest will follow by the end of the year, the health authorities said on Friday. The contract is with the company Bavarian Nordic.
- In an open letter, more than 100 high-profile names from culture and science have called on the Swiss government to take a tougher stance on Iran amid a violent crackdown on protestors in the country. The letter has six demands, including economic sanctions, a lifetime ban on entry to Switzerland for members of the regime, and the freezing of all funds in Swiss bank accounts.
- Over the next decade, Switzerland expects a shortfall of tens of thousands of teachers in both primary and secondary level schooling. In two separate studiesExternal link on Friday, the Federal Statistical Office said the number of teachers is expected to grow by 6% by 2031, while the number of students at primary level will increase by 8% and at lower secondary level by 9%.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of inaction in upholding the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war and urged it to conduct a mission to a notorious camp in the Russian-occupied east of the country. In reply, the ICRC shared the “frustration” over the lack of access but said they can’t enter by force.
Tweeting is not diplomacy, but it buys you time
Last week, I wrote a news story about the foreign ministry’s stance on the protests in Iran. The statement wasn’t on the ministry website though; it was on its Twitter page. This channel for communicating “official policies” has become all too common for the ministry.
In a commentaryExternal link in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), journalist Tobias Gafafer says that just because you tweet it doesn’t mean that there is a coherent strategy. This became clear after the Iranian regime cracked down on protestors in September.
The Swiss government faced criticism for its slow response to the violence in Iran. It was only after a Swiss politician started inquiring via Twitter why the ministry wasn’t speaking out when other countries had done so, that the ministry responded, and naturally, via Twitter.
“Dealing with tools like Twitter is a tightrope walk for the foreign ministry,” writes Gafafar. “The former Swiss ambassador, Paul Widmer, put it this way in his handbook on diplomacy: People like to laugh at diplomats as people who think twice before saying nothing. Twitter diplomats, on the other hand, are more likely to say something twice before thinking.”
Switzerland shouldn’t be publicly silent when it comes to blatant human rights violations, he adds, but “a credible and coherent strategy is more important than using the megaphone as often as possible to take a stand”.
Does climate civil disobedience work? I guess that depends what the goals are.
Today is Friday, and for the past couple of years Fridays have been about street protests with demands for politicians to take climate change seriously. Activists have started to turn to more creative strategies though.
On Friday morning, seven activists of Renovate Switzerland – a group of activists that calls to end our dependence on fossil fuels – blocked Dufourstrasse in Zurich, causing traffic jams. They had already blocked a bridge in Lausanne on Tuesday morning, and access to an oil refinery in Cressier in canton Neuchâtel on Monday.
Swiss public television SRF counted at least five protest actionsExternal link this week, and a dozen since April. Civil disobedience is becoming a more common tactic to get the attention of policymakers. But is it garnering the attention it wants? SRF writes that some Socialist and Green politicians are quietly expressing their doubts about these acts. They worry that the climate change movement could lose sympathy with the public if it’s so disruptive. At the same time, it’s often the only way to get people to understand the urgency of the problem.
Bonus track: Tina Turner gets her own Barbie doll.
US toymaker Mattel is celebrating the iconic singer with her own Barbie Doll. The doll features the US-born, Swiss resident, Tina Turner in the outfit she wore in the iconic music videoExternal link for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” pegged to the song’s 40th anniversary. According to an interview in Variety magazine, the doll’s designer said that getting the hair right was the hardest part. There was “lots of teasing and hairspray was involved!”
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