Switzerland along its long history has experienced different, interactive and evolving kinds of neutrality. In their first Alliance Convention (1291) the three cantons’ representatives introduced the duty for them to refrain from participating in disputes of the other, but to encourage and help them to achieve amicable agreement. The objective is to preserve the inside security and unity.

Soon joined during the next centuries by other cantons, the successive Alliance Conventions were concluded each time with the same approach : the duty to refrain from participating in the internal dispute inside the Alliance is conceived to protected this union. The third and not implicated canton is invited to « mediate », in order to reestablish interior peace and avoid external intervention. Neutrality linked with mediation has a (self)protection objective (passive neutrality). This idea was more developed when Basel Canton joined the Alliance (1501) : the duty to refrain from participating in dispute is clearly connected with the duty to intervene as a third party to find amicable solution. Moreover, Basel was called to « mediate » a dispute between a canton member of the union, Bern, and a non-member at the time, Geneva, and they reach an effective and sustainable agreement, after negotiations facilitated by the third (a Basel representative ; le Départ de Bâle de 1544). It looks like a first esquisse of the pacification objective, which developed as the active neutrality during the decades following the second world war.

The intercantonal Agreement called « Le Défensional de Wil » (1647) forbids the cantons to intervene militarily also outside of the Alliance, in the dispute between other Countries. The aim was to avoid though neutrality and independence external interferences and to protect against themselves. Refraining from participating into the 30 Years War (1618-1648), the cantons preserved at the same time external intervention and internal disputes, sparing a lot of population slaughters, cities, crops, harvests and other unlimited destructions, and losses of territories. This objective of protection was reflected also in the peace treaties of Paris and Vienna (1815) which recognised the Swiss neutrality and independence in the interest of Europa and Switzerland. That was also the common objective of the Parties to these treaties and of Swiss Cantons.

This neutrality of protection was completed by the neutrality of pacification (or active neutrality) after 1945 till the years 2010, with the Swiss Good Offices : Evian Agreement (1962 Algeria independence), first conflicts between USA and Iran, Russia and Georgia, Geneva Initiative (2003, facilitate a two-States peace plan), and encouraging mediations in internal armed conflicts in South America and Africa.

Contributing to build the peace was the Swiss software. But this constructive practice of neutrality seems having lost its importance this last decade for Swiss Authorities. Trough outside and inside pressures it have been few and few put in drawers, in the frame of the events in East Europa as of 2014 and in the Middle East.

The need of security prevails among Swiss Authorities. Thus, they introduced new practices and ideas, with an « original » new concept of neutrality : a so called cooperative neutrality, implying several agreements concluded with the NATO. An oxymoron ! Though it might have and has of course an impact on the trust in Switzerland, perceived as a country having lost or suspended its neutrality and independence.

For the Swiss Authorities, independence and neutrality are political and legal concepts, which should or could be adapted in practice to new situations, whilst for a broad part of the Swiss people they are values, that are part of the identity of the country. What is the perception of other countries about such changing? Will Switzerland deserve the trust from other nations for further mediations, good offices and other amicable facilitations? Will Geneva remain a place for peace negotiations, humanitarian law and disarmament conferences? But also are the Swiss Authorities themselves still willing to be actively  implied in amicable processes to preserve or reestablish the peace?

CONCLUSIONS : A SMALL ROOM FOR A GREAT DREAM

On the level of the ideas, neutrality does not seem compatible with dualist visions of the world supported by totalitarian Manichean ideologies, which divide the countries in two camps: the Good and the Evil, the democracies and the democratures, the Nord and the South. In a recent interview[1], Professor Pierre Blanc gives another analysis, distinguishing two movements : a necessity of regulation on one hand and a predation hubris on the other hand, with the conclusion that « the balance of power can not be favourable to predators States » because « their attitude is under the fire of criticism which increases in intensity »… « The world is shared between predators’ appetites and a thirst of regulation. But also between authoritarian excesses and requests for emancipation. » This analysis is fully compatible with a place for peace through mediation and other amicable approaches. It belongs therefore to Independent and Neutral Institutions and States to make sure the switch goes in the right way. Beginning by unifying their efforts to make possible the development and implementation of peace through mediation and other kinds of amicable processes, for instance in the frame of the Geneva Center for Neutrality. 

Full vertion of the research: Peace through mediation: a challenge. Is there a room for efficient and sustainable peace agreements ?

By Jean A. Mirimanoff, Independent Mediator (FSM/SFM), Honorary Magistrate, former ICRC Legal Adviser

For Neutrality Colloquium: A Call to Action for Active Neutrality & World Peace, Geneva, 26–27 June 2025