Swiss draw up targets for UN Security Council term

Soon to include the Swiss: the UN Security Council in New York. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

If Switzerland is successfully voted onto the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term, the government wants to focus its diplomatic efforts on peace and climate change.

On Wednesday the executive publishedExternal link a list of four priorities if Switzerland is awarded one of the two vacant non-permanent seats for 2023-2024: peacebuilding and conflict prevention, humanitarian protection, climate security, and reforms of the Security Council itself – to make it more transparent and to better include the voices of non-member countries.

The government said these priority areas would all draw on Switzerland’s “core strengths”: experience in dialogue and consensus-building, and expertise in facilitating the peaceful resolution of dispute.

The country could also use its role as the home of International Geneva – the networks of international organisations, including the UN’s European HQ, based in the southwestern Swiss city – to find solutions to international problems, it said.

Historic candidacy

For the first time in its history – and despite domestic political debates linked to the country’s neutral status – Switzerland is a candidate for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. If it is voted in next month, for the period 2023-2024, it would sit alongside nine other temporary members and five permanents (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US).

For the two vacant seats accorded to Western Europe, only Malta is lobbying for the other one. As such, even if Switzerland still needs to receive the backing of at least two-thirds of the UN General Assembly on June 9, its chances look good. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who also holds the rotating presidency post, said as much to the Keystone-SDA news agency in Davos this week.

“I’ve been pushing [the Swiss candidacy] every day for five years,” Cassis said. “I think I can say that everything has been done, and we don’t expect any surprises”.

As for the government’s priority list, this is to be discussed in detail by the two parliamentary foreign affairs committees before the government makes a final decision later this year.