A pilot project has found that not enough people are volunteering for civilian protection work in Switzerland. The authorities say legal changes are therefore needed. Under a pilot project carried out in southeastern Switzerland, civilian volunteers were integrated into the Graubünden Civil Protection Service’s rapid health section between 2022 and 2025. The aim was to be able to deploy the volunteers in the event of a natural disaster or a pandemic, said the Federal Office for Civilian Service (ZIVI) and the Graubünden Office for Military and Civil Defence (AMZ) in a press release last week. However, an evaluation of the project showed that it is not possible to recruit enough civilians on a voluntary basis. “For civilians, the freedom to organise their own assignments generally outweighed the usefulness of civil protection missions," the authorities said. It would therefore be necessary to make the commitments of civilians to civil protection mandatory, as provided for in the ...
