The government says it will accept 500 refugees over the next three years. Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said on Wednesday the cabinet had taken the decision due to the «disastrous humanitarian situation in Syria».
Sommaruga said the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) had already placed a request with Switzerland. She said Switzerland would take in «particularly vulnerable refugees».
The first contingent will arrive in Switzerland in October at the earliest. The justice minister added that the Federal Migration Office would work together with the cantons to ensure «a speedy and comprehensive integration» of the refugees. The integration programme will cost CHF 12 million over the three-year period.
Quota policy
The new refugee programme is being seen as a return to a general quota policy, such as that which Switzerland practised between 1950 and 1995. Under this scheme, the UNHCR selects for resettlement particularly needy refugees, whom receiving countries agree to take in. Since they have already been through a selection process, they would bypass the normal asylum procedure, although receiving countries have the right to check individual dossiers.
This was the scheme by which Switzerland offered refuge, for example, to people fleeing Hungary after the 1956 uprising, Tibet after the Chinese takeover in 1960 and Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of 1968.
The UNHCR says over one million refugees arrived in the countries neighbouring Syria in the first five months of 2013. It expects the total number of people to have left Syria by the end of the year to top three million. Three quarters of the refugee population are women and children.
The huge numbers have put a strain on the resources and communities of the host countries. Lebanon, with an estimated 2013 population of about 4,130,000 according to the CIA World Fact Book – just over half that of Switzerland – has taken in the largest number: over 700,000.