Annual report 2025

Promoting social integration is an important part of our humanitarian work, and means more than just having access to services: whether in Switzerland or other countries, it includes a sense of belonging, self-determination and involvement. This remained a core objective for us over the past year.

In Switzerland, the SRC works in healthcare and everyday support, integration for migrants, rescue operations and training. We are the second largest provider of courses for the general population. Volunteers are the beating heart of the Red Cross, and we are able to carry out our good work throughout the country thanks to our 48 400 volunteers, including 10 000 Junior Red Cross members.

As the national Red Cross society in Switzerland, we play a special, legally defined role: auxiliary to the public authorities. We are recognized as the ‘voluntary auxiliary in the humanitarian services of our government’. We assist the Swiss authorities in such sectors as blood donor services, first aid and rescue operations. And we work with the individual cantons in the social services and healthcare sectors.

We also run disaster relief operations and development cooperation programmes. With the start of a new programme phase in 2025, we reoriented our international cooperation activities. The SRC plays a specific role within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: through specialist support, short-term emergency response operations and by helping to shape the humanitarian agenda.

The focus is on the national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, which are the local actors with distinct responsibility for the programmes and services in their own countries. We strengthen these sister national societies’ organizational, professional and institutional capacities. Last year, we ran as many as 121 projects in collaboration with the national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and the local population.