ABSTRACT
Switzerland is among those OECD countries which have, over the past few years, seriously started to address the issue of policy coherence in their relations with developing countries. In March 1994, the Federal Council, that is, the government, submitted to Parliament a report on ‘Switzerland’s North–South Relations in the 1990s’.This report, which Parliament approved, is better known as ‘North–South Guidelines’. 1 Basically, the Guidelines are to:
present Switzerland’s development policy objectives;
recognise that there are contradictions and conflicts of interests between these objectives and other foreign and domestic policy objectives; and
suggest that contradictions and conflicts of interest must be identified, clarified through dialogue and, ‘if possible, overcome’.
The purpose of this chapter is to:describe the emergence in Switzerland of this new approach to relations with developing countries (history and rationale);
discuss the objectives of Swiss development policy and the concept of coherence as they are presented in government policy papers;
make a first appraisal of the implementation of this new approach by describing the mechanisms set up to implement it within the federal administration and the role played by other actors.
It is premature to make a global assessment on this new policy. We have therefore chosen to concentrate on a few topical issues where the new approach has been put to the test since 1994. The issues were selected either for their significance for developing countries or for the illustration they provide of the dilemma that confronts governments in their pursuit of greater policy coherence towards developing countries.