Fewer Swiss work for ICRC

Like 60 per cent of his colleagues, Jean-Michel Monod, the chief ICRC delegate for Asia and South America, is Swiss Keystone

The number of Swiss nationals working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is falling.

In the ten years since the ICRC abandoned its rule of employing only Swiss nationals, the proportion of Swiss working for the organisation has declined markedly.

Nowadays around 40 per cent of delegate positions are filled by foreigners, who account for 237 of the 588 ICRC delegates, and their numbers have increased by ten per cent in the past year.

The majority of these foreign workers come from Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East.

Gender equality

Even though ICRC still has a disproportionate number of Swiss delegates compared to foreign ones, the proportion of men to women is even. Women account for 52 per cent of all the organisation’s delegates.

Max Hadorn, the head of recruitment for the ICRC, says the foreign delegates are well placed for their roles. He says they integrate well and can easily identify with the ICRC’s humanitarian work and clear operating principles.

He adds that many of them have already worked for other aid organisations.

On the ground ICRC workers are easy to recruit because there is a great deal of interest and enthusiasm in its humanitarian work. Even the tragic murder of six ICRC employees in Congo last year does not seem to have put people off.

In 2001, the organisation had between 5,000 and 6,000 people on its books.

The ICRC’s policy of only employing Swiss nationals in 1992 – because of Swiss neutrality – was scrapped in 1992, amid the political upheavals of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

swissinfo with agencies