Cars queue at a border crossing near Ferney Voltaire, in France, as they head towards Geneva, Switzerland on Wednesday, 10 June, 2026. (Keystone/AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

“All four applications were refused.” That was the experience of a British family whose hopes to move from Geneva to the Pays de Gex were dampened by the French administration. As is common in the sector, the plan was for the main breadwinner, a UN agency employee holding a Swiss legitimation card, to commute across the French border. The testimony appeared last June on Glocals, a public forum popular with Geneva’s international community.

It echoes concerns raised by the United Nations Office at Geneva Staff Union, which warned in a 31 August statement of “recent visa issues for staff living in France”. “The uptick in refusals of visa requests appears to be linked to the increased precarity and decreased duration of contracts,” wrote the union’s executive secretary, Laura Johnson, and vice president Janet Puhalovic.

In 2025, 41.8 per cent of international Geneva’s 26,729 international servants resided in France, according to cantonal figures. The wave of aid cuts that has swept over Geneva in the last year has led to job cuts, especially amid more stable, longer-term positions. In response, agencies are increasingly resorting to shorter and more precarious contracts.

Speaking over the phone to Geneva Solutions, union president Ian Richards explains that the number of reported cases has been rising since the beginning of the year, noting that “the Swiss have to accept everyone with a UN contract, but France has no obligation to do so”.

Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.

First aid kits at an exhibit at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum on the role of design in humanitarian action, in Geneva, 6 October 2026 (Agostina Cerisoli/Geneva Solutions)

HUMANITARIAN ACTION MEETS ART AND DESIGN. A prosthesis, a first-aid kit, and poems sit in the same exhibition. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum has brought together these seemingly different items, dating back to the early 20th century, in an exhibition on the role of design in humanitarian crises.

Humanitarian, by Design? Design at the Heart of Humanitarian Action runs until late August 2027. It presents nearly 200 objects and photographs, most of which are displayed for the first time.

“We were driven by an interest in the materialisation of art in the humanitarian field,” curator Anna Leander, sociologist and professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said during a recent press visit.

Teamwork. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Future of Humanitarian Design– a four-year research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation –, the Geneva Graduate Institute and other academic institutions, bringing together political scientists, architects, designers and engineers to show how design shapes the lives of people who depend on humanitarian assistance.

Triple focus. The exhibition is structured in three areas. Objects include first-aid kits, posters, food stamps, and blankets sourced from countries such as Venezuela, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Among them is an improvised aid kit made by a nurse in Germany during the First World War. The exhibit also presents how design can support and constrain people’s experiences in spaces such as camps, waiting areas and informal settlements, while ‘imaginaries’ looks at photos, technologies and narratives through which crises are portrayed.

–Agostina Cerisoli