Swiss minister defends government’s Afghan refugee strategy
US marines help with the evacuation of citizens at Kabul Airport in Afghanistan on August 20, 2021.
Keystone / Lance Cpl. Nicholas Guevara
Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter has defended Switzerland’s refugee policy on Afghanistan. The Alpine country cannot unilaterally help people leave the country, she declared in an interview on Saturday.
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“Switzerland has absolutely no way of getting these people out of the country,” she told the CH media group on Saturday. “We cannot arbitrarily select 10,000 people and evacuate them from the crisis zone.”
She added that there were currently no mass population displacements from Afghanistan.
On Wednesday, government ministers outlined their policy on Afghanistan, saying they were concentrating on evacuating Swiss nationals and around 230 locals who worked on Swiss projects in Afghanistan, together with their relatives.
The justice minister has not ruled out accepting more refugees in the future but says there are no immediate plans to loosen normal asylum procedures for Afghan refugees.
“Because Switzerland is not a NATO member state and because it does not have its own armed forces on the ground, the foreign ministry is dependent on the cooperation of other states,” the minister explained.
Keller-Sutter added that Switzerland was better placed to concentrate on humanitarian efforts in the region. She pointed out that around three million Afghan refugees live in Iran, 2.5 million in Pakistan and an estimated 200,000 to 600,000 in Turkey. In Afghanistan, which has an estimated population of over 39 million, there are over half a million internally displaced people.
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Pressure grows on Switzerland to accept Afghan refugees
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Pressure has been growing on Switzerland to accept Afghan refugees. Switzerland’s current stance has already been criticised by refugee groups and left-leaning political parties. The cities of Geneva, Zurich and Bern have also called on the government to re-think its stance and open its doors to refugees from Afghanistan.
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Swiss offer mediation in Afghan crisis, join airlift efforts
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Switzerland is sending a plane to Uzbekistan to repatriate people evacuated from Kabul, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
Swiss diplomat describes ‘intense’ evacuation from Kabul
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The head of the Swiss cooperation office in Kabul has described the evacuation from Afghanistan as “intense and emotional”.
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Swiss hesitate to offer shelter to large numbers of Afghan refugees
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The government has agreed to take in about 230 people from war-torn Afghanistan but has no plans for now to accept larger groups of refugees.
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Switzerland has suspended repatriations to Afghanistan “until further notice owing to the changed situation in the country”.
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