Article by Ambassador Gennady Gatilov "Switzerland’s neutrality. A perspective from Geneva"

"Switzerland’s neutrality. A perspective from Geneva."

(October 11, 2023)

Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted the anti-Russian tendencies within Switzerland's Foreign Policy Strategy for 2024-2027, emphasizing that the Russian side "will draw conclusions regarding Geneva's compliance with the criteria of a truly neutral international diplomatic platform".

Official Bern, although unfortunately, has lost its status of a neutral player on the global political arena. It’s a fact. Both Russian and foreign analysts have already written a great number of articles and publications on this topic. Yet several questions remain. How has Switzerland's departure from its long-standing traditions affected international Geneva? Have the stances of this once neutral country and its activities within international organizations changed? Let's take look at specific examples.

A little bit of history

In its application to join the UN as a full Member State in 2002, official Bern placed special emphasis on Switzerland's neutral status. Therefore, Kaspar Villiger, the Swiss President at the time, wrote to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in his June 20, 2002 letter, noting that the authorities "are responsible for taking the necessary measures to preserve Switzerland’s neutrality". This thesis made its way into the Swiss president's speech during the high-level week of the 57th Session of the UN General Assembly.

Back then and later on, not all Swiss residents welcomed the country’s full UN membership, fearing that their country might be used in political games of greater powers, especially the US. As the saying goes, "as if they had second sight". Bern was unable to withstand the pressure, increased its activities within the NATO "Partnership for Peace" programme, in difficult situations allowed the alliance's planes to fly over its territory.

In this context, a quote by François Nordmann, Switzerland's former representative to the UN, comes to mind, that Swiss neutrality is "just a tool in the hands of the government, which can change depending on the circumstances".

The inter-Syrian Constitutional Committee

Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, Switzerland was consistent in joining every EU sanctions package imposed on Russia. In certain cases, it has even outshone some of its partners. This approach had, among other things, an extremely negative impact on the ability of our delegations to routinely attend international events in Geneva. Holders of diplomatic passports were suddenly required to obtain Swiss visas, something that had never happened before under bilateral agreements. Another issue arose - of ensuring inviolability and other immunities of certain Russian representatives who might be listed under the Western sanctions. Finally, termination of direct flights between our countries has greatly complicated logistics.

All things considered, the Russian side concluded that Geneva could no longer be regarded as an optimal "venue" for the full-fledged work of the Russian interministerial delegation, which used to come to Geneva to join every meeting of the inter-Syrian Constitutional Committee as one of the guarantors of the Astana format. Damascus followed suit, as it refused to send pro-Government delegations to Switzerland in the absence of Russian representatives.

Thus, Bern's unconstructive and short-sighted policy has not only led to a lengthy "halt" of the constitutional process, which is an essential component of the political settlement in Syria, but has also tarnished Geneva’s reputation of Geneva as a venue for holding important international events.

The "cross-border" mechanism

The situation around the extension of the mandate of the cross-border mechanism for the delivery of humanitarian aid to north-western Syria (CBM) was a clear manifestation of Bern's departure from the principles of neutrality.

It’s a known fact that on July 10, 2023, the UN Security Council Resolution 2672 on international humanitarian assistance to Syria expired, which, in particular, served as the backbone for the CBM operation. Before the resolution's demise, Moscow had proposed to find a solution to such a sensitive issue and even put forward its own alternative draft resolution. Its main purpose was to take into account Syria’s stance, since the country’s interests were directly affected in this case.

However, Switzerland, elected to the UN Security Council for 2023-2024, was completely unprepared for this turn of events. Instead of acting in good faith and impartially as one of the informal supervisors of the Syrian humanitarian initiatives, trying to find common ground within the Council’s members, representatives from Bern tried to monopolise the process of negotiating the document and exclusively promote Western approaches, dismissing Damascus's legitimate demands and our principled concerns.

Within the draft document, the Swiss persistently promoted paragraphs on the expansion and extension of the CBM, which was used by the US and its allies to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, as well as to supply the terrorists in Idlib, who were listed by the UN Security Council. Meanwhile, all strictly humanitarian paragraphs of the Russian side were carefully "crossed out".

Eventually, the draft resolution proposed by Bern turned out to be one-sided and left no room for a reasonable compromise. Naturally, we were forced to veto the document during the vote. The Westerners did not accept our balanced draft document either due to their deep political bias and anti-Damascus stances. Thus, the Swiss have led the discussions to an impasse with zero actual effort to overcome it.

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC)

For many years, the HRC has been regularly adopting the "Business and Human Rights" resolution. The Russian Federation was among the initiators of this document. Traditionally, it was drafted by an interregional Working Group of authors, which until recently included Russia, Norway, Ghana and Argentina.

However, last year the Norwegians announced their withdrawal from the main co-sponsors of the resolution due to their own reasons, offering Switzerland instead. The Swiss, in turn, assured of their readiness for open dialogue and constructive work on the document. However, as soon as we began working this summer on the draft resolution for the 53rd Session of the HRC, the Swiss diplomats immediately broke the promises they had made. First, they strongly recommended that the Russian side voluntarily withdraws from its co-authorship under the pretext of a certain "difficult geopolitical situation". Later, they followed with unscrupulous backroom dealings with the other members of the Group. When Russia refused to give up its co-authorship, Bern resorted to outright blackmail, saying that its representatives would not sit at the same table with the Russian delegation during consultations on the draft resolution. This also did not help. Eventually, the Swiss simply announced their withdrawal from working on the document, thus breaking up the Group of its key initiators. As a result, the existence of the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, established within the HRC and the mandate of which was to be extended by the resolution, was jeopardised. It was only thanks to the constructive stance of Argentina, which decided to single-handedly introduce the relevant draft that preserved the Working Group.

The UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE)

During the ECE session this April, Switzerland was elected as Chair of the Commission for the next two years. The country was thereby honoured and trusted. It was expected that the Swiss chairmanship would ensure a depoliticized nature of the ECE activities, which is traditionally a platform for professional expert dialogue. Unfortunately, those expectations were in vain. The Chairperson of the Commission now doesn't oppose, but rather plays up to the delegates of the EU, the US, the UK and Ukraine, who, in violation of the rules of procedure, have turned the events under the auspices of the Commission, including the meetings of its Executive Committee, into a chapiteau-show, using the ECE rostrum for anti-Russian provocations.

Technical obstacles faced by Russian delegations

The Swiss Permanent Mission to the UN Office in Geneva, which tries to fulfil its responsibilities as a host country honestly and to the fullest extent, has no other choice follow the explicitly discriminatory guidelines imposed by Bern with regard to the Russian delegates attending UN events. The review process of visa applications has become bureaucratised to the brim. Another "innovation" is the need to obtain personal invitations from secretariats of international organisations, which has never been a requirement before and which makes it quite difficult to approve the interministerial composition of the delegations our country sends to Geneva.

Conclusions

Switzerland's departure from its neutral policies obviously doesn’t allow Geneva to comprehensively fulfil its functions as one of the UN capitals. Even though official Bern is still a long way from Washington's visa arbitrariness. However, "a bad example is contagious”, as they say.

We will continue to closely monitor anti-Russian tendencies in Switzerland’s actions as a host country for many UN organisations. If new obstacles arise, we will draw appropriate conclusions. If necessary, we will demand that certain international events be moved to another venues, more acceptable to all participants.