Campaigners have collected enough signatures to force a nationwide vote on a proposal to slow down population growth through immigration limits and measures to promote birth control in developing countries.
The Environment and Population Association (Ecopop) on Friday handed in more than 120,000 signatures to the federal authorities. No date for the vote has been set yet.
The initiative committee wants to limit annual immigration to Switzerland to 0.2 per cent of the resident population. It also seeks to set aside ten per cent of the country’s annual aid funds to promote voluntary measures to encourage birth control in developing countries.
However, campaigners dismissed allegations by some media that the initiative was aimed against foreigners or similar to measures used by Germany’s Nazi regime.
The Ecopop group argues it is an opportunity to have an open and democratic discussion about population growth.
The committee includes a former head of the Federal Environment Office as well as a retired professor at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology.
Environmental groups refused to support the committee, but local sections of the centre-left Green Party and the rightwing Swiss People’s Party helped collect signatures, the campaigners said.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Swiss_to_vote_on_curbing_population_growth.html?cid=33868954
Categories: Europe, Immigration, Switzerland
A ‘curb on population growth’ may be considered ‘nationalistic’, however, to combine it with promoting birth control in third world countries especially does seem to be racist.