Helvetistan: when Switzerland joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund back in 1992, it gained some unsavoury freshman classmates. Swiss News looks at how the Swiss now leads this motley 'Helvetistan' crew.

AuteurShepard, Lyn
Fonction Politics

There was something quite incongruous about 'the new kids on the block from the start ...

A quirk of fate had bunched wealthy neutral Switzerland in the Bretton Woods institutions along with Poland, Azerbaijan, four scruffy" Central Asian countries named 'Stan' and what since 2001 has become Serbia and Montenegro.

The New Crowd

Journalists seized on that bizarre 1992 moment by dubbing the new eight-member voting bloc 'Helvetistan'. The moniker still lumps the Swiss and former Soviet upstarts (Azerbaijan, Kyrgstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) with the Poles and former Yugoslav states added to the mix.

But more than 12 years after the Washington-based World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) admitted 'Helvetistan' human-rights groups grumble at Switzerland's role as the voting blot's elected leader. As a champion of humanitarian values, they say, the Alpine nation should not act the role of a Mafia consigliare, dismissing charges that 'rogue nations' within its bloc commit grave offences against humanity. There's widespread sentiment among nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that Switzerland has been hanging out with the wrong crowd.

Misunderstood

Yet the Swiss executive directors on the two banking boards insist that critics in nongovernmental organisations largely misunderstand their role. They insist that Switzerland should cast its blot's 2.8 per cent vote to represent the interests of the eight-nation 'Helvetistan' group--not judge democratic shortcomings in the bloc's countries or the 'Sums" behaviour in policing homeland security.

Scolding the 'Stans'

This doesn't satisfy persistent NGO critics like Human Rights Watch. It reserves some of its harshest words for the Central Asian 'Stans'. The NGO's reports--often urging the European Bank fur Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to press for reforms--show why:

Kyrgyzstan--"The Kyrgyz government's human rights record has steadily deteriorated during the past several years. Human Rights Watch has documented serious rights violations--particularly in the arms of political participation, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression."

Tajikstan--"The government severely limits political pluralism, the media and religious freedom.... [It] has a long and consistently poor record of election fraud and manipulation. The 1999 presidential and 2000 parliamentary elections 'were neither free nor fair' and the government apparently manipulated the 2003 constitutional...

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