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250 organisations from 60 countries are calling on Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein in an open letter to stop imposing strict plant variety protection laws on the countries of the global South; laws with which they themselves do not comply. This demand by the EFTA countries for strict plant variety protection – a kind of patent protection on seeds – drastically restricts the free use of seeds, to the detriment of farmers in the global South. The right to food, food sovereignty and agrobiological diversity are all under threat.

For decades, the neoliberal development model has been accepting of the repression of human rights. It is time for a paradigm shift.

The call can no longer be ignored, production offshored to low-wage countries must be brought back. The more pressing a paradigm shift, the more careful the approach must be. Otherwise developing countries could yet again pay the price.

The Swiss Government plans to use as much as 400 million francs of development funds annually to fulfil the Paris Climate Agreement. That sounds good, but it is highly problematic, as it comes at the expense of the poorest.

Cofco Tunhe, the world's second-largest producer of canned tomatoes, operates in Xinjiang, where China oppresses millions of Uyghurs. The Cofco Group has set up its global trading headquarters in Geneva. Switzerland must act.

With the Belt and Road Initiative, China is pushing global development in a manner unparalleled to date. But how sustainable are the “new silk roads”? Switzerland wants a piece of the cake and has signed a memorandum of understanding with China.

In a position paper, Alliance Sud presents the links between climate justice and development cooperation and calls for Switzerland to fulfil its financial responsibility and the Paris Agreement.

On 19 May, Switzerland votes again on its corporate tax reform, which Parliament has linked to additional funding of its pension system (AHV). From a development policy point of view, the tax proposal does not represent any significant progress.

Economic associations are opposed to the introduction of civil liability for business-related human rights violations and environmental degradation, as proposed under the Responsible Business Initiative; they point to National Contact Point.