On a balmy April afternoon, the five-star Hotel d’Angleterre on the banks of Lake Geneva was recovering from a crowded lunch hour. The denizens of the world’s diplomacy capital, however, had not been displaying their usual joie de vivre.
With global trade in disarray, autocracy on the march and aid organisations reeling from US funding cuts, officials at the roughly 450 international bodies based in Geneva fear for the city’s future as a pillar of global politics.
“The world is changing every day right now. People need to meet and discuss, and we see that in our hotels and restaurants,” said Xavier Rey de Lasteyrie, CEO of Geneva-based Rey Group, which owns and develops hotels and other real estate in Switzerland and abroad. “Geneva is still the place for exchanging information. What we worry about is how different the picture is in six months’ time.”
Though sometimes caricatured as a sleepy nest of long lunches and large expense accounts, the inhabitants of Switzerland’s second city say it plays a critical role in the global order. It hosted historic summits during the cold war, a Biden-Putin meeting in 2021 and negotiations that laid the groundwork for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“We have a saying here that for the UN, New York is the restaurant but Geneva is the kitchen. The real work — often behind the scenes — is done in Geneva,” said Sami Kanaan, the city’s deputy mayor.
President Trump’s decision to leave the Geneva-based World Health Organisation set off a cacophony of alarm bells, Kanaan said. “We have faced crises before but I don’t think we have faced this level of complexity and urgency.”
US cuts have prompted lay-offs and slashed budgets at bodies from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
UN secretary-general António Guterres is looking at merging major UN agencies in a radical overhaul, and has asked departments to try to relocate staff from Geneva and New York to less expensive cities. Meanwhile, the WHO plans to cut staff and narrow its work, and the US said funding for the World Trade Organization and others is “under review”.
The US is not alone in turning away from humanitarian work. Countries across Europe are on a dramatic rearmament drive — with the UK slashing its development budget to fund it. Even neutral Switzerland has raised its defence spending ceiling by billions for the coming years, while cutting millions from foreign aid.
Geneva is starting to reflect some global geopolitical patterns, with China playing a bigger role while the US retreats. Beijing is expected to supply more than a fifth of the UN budget for the first time this year.
“Nature hates a vacuum, and others could now step in. China is very active here in terms of vocal support of multilateralism” said Vincent Subilia of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce.
But alongside legitimate diplomatic work, Beijing also uses its Geneva foothold to surveil and harass critics, according to an investigation published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists this week. China’s foreign ministry denied the reporting, saying it “fully respects” other countries’ laws.
New funding sources are sorely needed, said Maxime Provini, Radical-Liberal party leader in Geneva. The city issued a loan of 2mn Swiss francs ($2.4mn) for Geneva-based NGOs but “we can’t take all the responsibility of these organisations”, Provini said.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is cutting costs by 30 per cent at its Geneva headquarters and in regional offices, halving the number of senior employees, according to a staff-wide email last week seen by the Financial Times. The UN overall is likely to lose thousands of employees, many in Geneva.
“There is likely to be an impact on the city, including its global role as a humanitarian centre,” said Matthew Saltmarsh, UNCHR’s head of news and media, before last week’s new cuts were announced.
Geneva still has large private banking, commodities and luxury watch sectors boosting its economy, but diplomacy and aid are central to its identity. Many Genevans are alarmed by Saudi Arabia playing host to Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations, seeing it as evidence they’re being left behind by an authoritarian shift in the global order.
Some are already accepting a diminished role in the world ahead — and reckoning with what they should conserve.
“The question is, ‘What do we want to keep?’ I think that anything around humanitarian law and peace,” said Jean Keller, chair of the board of trustees of Geneva Call, an organisation aimed at protecting civilians in conflicts. Neutral Switzerland, “more than almost any other country, can operate in terrible places at war”.
The fears have sparked national soul-searching in a country that prides itself on independence from the rest of Europe.
The far-right says Switzerland has itself to blame for Geneva’s lower standing, arguing the Ukraine talks are taking place elsewhere because it damaged its non-partisan credentials by adopting EU sanctions on Russia.
“The main reason why Geneva is losing glamour as an international place is not the fact that the US is withdrawing aid. The main reason its future has become more difficult is because Switzerland chose to lose its neutrality,” said Vincent Schaller, a member of the hard-right Swiss People’s Party in Geneva’s municipal parliament.
François Savary, founder of a local wealth management company, called for unity in saving the city. “It is a national cause and everyone needs to be involved in solving it,” he said.
Federal and local governments have passed packages of loans and grants to help Geneva’s international work and organisations.
But politicians know the support, which totals less than $20mn, won’t come close to the sums needed for Geneva to keep its current status. From city to federal level, officials described the contributions as “symbolic” and a “signal”, while admitting they were nowhere near the size of the disappearing US funding.
Among them is Yves Herren, president of Geneva’s Green Liberals, who helped push through the city’s emergency loan to non-profits. Without more funds, “I fear at some point Geneva starts to lose its position” as “host for international events”, he said.
