Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
The demographic stats for 2023 are out, and the headline news is that immigration is back up after slowing down during the pandemic. Some 190,500 people moved to Switzerland last year, of whom 21,900 were Swiss returning home. Were you among them?
In the news: Earthquake aid for Turkey and Syria, Swiss population growth, and job cuts at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
- Two months after the devastating earthquake in the border region between Turkey and Syria, Swiss Solidarity has financed 11 projects of Swiss partner organisations providing humanitarian aid on the ground. The aid is mainly focused on access to health care, emergency shelters, food, water and other essentials, Swiss Solidarity said today.
- The resident Swiss population increased by 73,900 to 8.8 million last year. The rise was driven by immigration: after a slowdown in new arrivals during the Covid-19 pandemic years 2020-2021, last year saw 190,500 people move to Switzerland, a 15% increase on the previous year, the Federal Statistical Office said.
- The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said today that the 1,500 job losses over the next 12 months would accompany the closure of at least 20 of its 350 global sites. Several aid programmes would also be scaled back or shelved. The organisation had already warned that it was facing a shortfall in its desired budget of CHF2.79 billion ($2.99 billion) for 2023.
“Have you lost much?” A Swiss citizen living in northern Italy says she has been asked this question a lot recently by concerned neighbours, following Credit Suisse’s implosion.
Writing in the Ostschweiz newspaperExternal link, Beatrice Strässle, a former journalist who has run a B&B in Piedmont for about five years, says many Italians assume the Swiss are born rich.
“We were able to calm worried minds, however, and added that we had neither much to lose nor an account with the bank in question. When we explained that we’d entrusted our little pile to an Italian bank, this triggered doubtful looks, even laughter, since in Italy a couple of banks have run into difficulties in recent years.
When it comes to presumed wealth, we can understand the people here. Most of them are Swiss, who build a beautiful holiday home with a pool and other amenities. A few years ago a lady said during a chat in the village shop: ‘You Swiss are renovating Piedmont for us.’ She was right, at least in our region.
But I digress. The banks. We’re not completely Swiss account-free. After all, on the one hand we can’t and don’t want to let go completely, and on the other it’s easier to transfer money within Switzerland. However, the account maintenance fees are steep. For decades the Organisation of the Swiss Abroad has been fighting for lower fees, and these efforts have already paid off at a couple of banks.
A visit to the bank in our nearest town takes ages. There’s no such thing as ‘I’ll just pop to the bank’. Italians know this, and so do we. You sit patiently in rows in the bank, read, chat and wait. It can take half an hour, and no one gets upset. We’ve learnt that making an appointment in advance saves a lot of time. Apart from that, the ATMs can do quite a lot. But there are also moments – especially in the lonely winter months – when I like to take a seat in front of the counter and chat a bit with the people sitting next to me. Improving your Italian is included, free of charge.”
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In the latest episode of the Inside Geneva podcast we take a long hard look at how aid is delivered, and why it is often obstructed. Did UN aid agencies fail Syria after the earthquake?
“The UN, being a club, represents its members, and therefore it considers that it cannot do anything on the territory of a member state without the consent of the member state,” explains Marco Sassoli from Geneva University in the podcast, Aid Access Dilemmas, published today.
But are there ways to get aid in immediately? Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council says he is “a fundamentalist on the need to go straight to the victims, the people in need cross border, cross line, cross mountain, cross desert – the shortest route”.
But with armed groups on the ground, how do aid workers persuade them to let them in? Thaer Allaw, from the Center for Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation, explains this difficulty: “We think that we have a good cause, and we think that those humanitarian principles are universal. And then when you hit the reality they are not.”
Are you happy? What do you worry about most? Do you trust Swiss politicians? Share your point of view in one of Switzerland’s biggest-ever surveys – commissioned by our parent company, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation.
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