Cluster: Swiss Abroad

Social aid abusers face fines in Zurich

This content was published on Feb 6, 2006 But specialists say administrative fines are just overkill and other measures are sufficient to deal with abuses of the social system. On Monday Zurich’s parliament, led by the centre-right, decided to toughen the canton’s law on social aid, introducing special fines for abusers for the first time in Switzerland. The left, which opposed these new…

Swiss Politics

Campaigners want progress on tobacco treaty

This content was published on Feb 5, 2006 The appeal comes as the Geneva-based World Health Organization hosts its first meeting on Monday to assess progress on the anti-tobacco convention, which came into force a year ago. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) sets out strict deadlines for countries to ban tobacco advertising and slap bigger health warnings on cigarette packets. Switzerland…

Swiss Politics

Quotas for Swiss diplomats causes outcry

This content was published on Feb 5, 2006 Calmy-Rey turned a blind eye to recommendations by an expert panel and insisted on an equal number of male and female diplomatic novices. Three of the 19 members of the panel handed in their resignations in protest at the decision of the foreign minister. Calmy-Rey rejected six male candidates even though they had all passed…

Swiss Politics

Swiss aid for Palestinians continues unabated

This content was published on Feb 3, 2006 Although the Swiss foreign ministry has given assurances that its aid programme will not be affected by Hamas’s victory, other major international donors are threatening to withdraw funding. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in Gaza and the West Bank has a budget this year of SFr25 million ($19 million), which is administered…

Swiss Politics

Swiss need to work harder at peacekeeping

This content was published on Feb 1, 2006 Holbrooke believes Switzerland has fallen behind the likes of Norway as global diplomats and should commit more troops to peacekeeping efforts. The former US ambassador to the United Nations, who was the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia, was speaking at the opening of the Human Rights…

Swiss Politics

Long-term aid pledged to Afghanistan

This content was published on Jan 31, 2006 State secretary for foreign affairs, Michael Ambühl, is representing Switzerland at the two-day London Conference on Afghanistan which started on Tuesday. The international summit is to agree a five-year plan to boost reconstruction efforts in the central Asian country, and combat violence and narcotics. The “Afghanistan Compact”, which the international community is expected to sign…

Swiss Politics

Switzerland loses ground on women in politics

This content was published on Jan 31, 2006 The country fell from 22nd to 27th place in the annual survey, compiled by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). This year’s results showed that, despite an increasing proportion of women politicians, Switzerland is losing ground internationally. Rwanda – where 49 per cent of politicians are women – tops the IPU list of women’s representation in…

Swiss Politics

More women power in male-dominated Davos

This content was published on Jan 29, 2006 She was one of the keynote speakers at a public panel discussion on the theme of “More Women in Top Positions” at the Open Forum in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. “Women in positions of power often meet subtle resistance, they are considered to be neither proper women nor real men,” Calmy-Rey said. The…

Swiss Politics

Nestlé unfazed by change in South America

This content was published on Jan 27, 2006 Peter Brabeck, who is co-chairing the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, says the Vevey-based group is currently enjoying a golden period in the region. Galvanised by the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the political left has been making important gains across South America. Former coca farmer Evo Morales…

Swiss Politics

Swiss satisfied with Euro 2008 progress

This content was published on Jan 27, 2006 Christian Mutschler says he is confident that disagreements over who should foot the bill for the football championships, hosted jointly by Switzerland and neighbouring Austria, will be ironed out. It was revealed last month that the cost of staging the championships in Switzerland had mushroomed from an initial estimate of SFr10.5 million ($8.3 million) to…

Cluster: Swiss Abroad

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