Switzerland has suspended its participation in a UN program to take in vulnerable refugees. With the arrival of people from Ukraine, the reception capacities are currently exhausted, said the spokesman of the Secretary of State for Migration, Lukas Rieder, yesterday at the request of the AFP.
“The program is not in question, just the recordings are temporarily suspended,” he said. Rieder thus confirmed the corresponding reports from “NZZ am Sonntag” and the newspaper “Le Temps”. Rieder explained that the Swiss asylum system is under “high pressure”, especially with regard to the number of accommodations and staffing.
Reassessment in the first half of 2023
Switzerland, which has a population of 8.7 million, has pledged to take in a total of 1,820 vulnerable refugees in 2022 and 2023. By mid-December, 641 people had been accommodated as part of the program and another 400 would be admitted by March 2023, Rieder said. But everyone else would have to wait. The decision will be reassessed in the first half of 2023.
According to Le Temps newspaper, refugees in need of protection come from Afghanistan, Syria and Sudan. Among them are mainly women, children and sick people. Since the beginning of the year, 100,000 people have applied for asylum in Switzerland, including 70,000 war refugees from Ukraine. That’s more people than we’ve had since World War II.