Switzerland Copes With Jobless UN Bureaucrats Defunded by Trump

President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies are compelling the rest of the world to share the burden of dealing with displaced international bureaucrats.

Thousands of layoffs have occurred at United Nations agencies in Geneva, Switzerland, and elsewhere around the world as a result of the Trump administration withdrawing from the World Health Organization and rolling back the size of the U.S.’s international obligations.

That has meant Swiss authorities are prepping the now-unemployed bureaucrats for their likely return voyages to their home countries. Switzerland enforces its immigration policies, and the former U.N. employees are apparently not exempt from them. 

That also has spawned job clinics in the French-speaking Swiss city, where nonprofit bureaucrats can reorient themselves to a world less reliant on American largesse. Furthermore, officials in the Swiss cities of Bern and Geneva have dedicated more than 300 million Swiss francs (about $370 million) to nongovernmental organizations and other international groups. 

Don’t count on the Swiss to necessarily keep the now-jobless bureaucrats wandering around their country, however. One presentation by a Swiss city conveyed at a job clinic in June to U.N. staff and their families that “a longer courtesy period” of remaining in the country was dependent on their specific circumstances or whether they could afford to stay. 

At least one U.N. official was less than impressed with how the WHO had handled the layoffs. “I’m a little surprised [the WHO has] acted like they didn’t see it coming,” the official told Politico. 

Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office announcing the U.S.’s withdrawal from WHO, citing the organization’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”

The Trump administration has launched an unprecedented effort at reforming or defunding the tangled net of government agencies, NGOs, and longtime government employees. That has meant cutting funds to both the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

In February, The Daily Signal reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio found about $60 billion in spending that could be totally cut between the two government agencies. Rubio has also spearheaded the forced departure of hundreds of government workers from the federal workforce. The secretary of state has articulated that every policy he would pursue in the State Department would be based on three objectives: Does it make America safer?; Does it make America stronger?; and Does it make America more prosperous?

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