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Christine Schraner Burgener, former Swiss ambassador to Berlin and Thailand, will be the new head of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). The Federal Council has designated the 57-year-old to succeed Mario Gattiker, who is retiring.
Schraner Burgener, UN special envoy for Myanmar since 2018, will take office on January 1, 2022 due to the ongoing mandate, as announced on Thursday by the Department of Justice (FDJP). At the same time, the employment relationship with Gattiker was extended beyond the normal retirement age for three months until the end of 2021.
Attorney Schraner Burgener is as familiar with the federal administration as he is with international diplomacy, he says in the message. Therefore, his election is also a sign of the growing international network of migration policies.
Schraner Burgener was born in Meiringen in Bern in 1963 and grew up in Japan. In 1991 he joined the diplomatic service of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). After working in Morocco, Berne and Dublin, Schraner Burgener became deputy director of the FDFA Directorate for International Law and head of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Law department.
Job sharing in Thailand
From 2009 she assumed the position of ambassador of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia as a premiere in Swiss diplomacy in the shared work with her husband Christoph Burgener. Schraner Burgener was responsible for Thailand, where in 2010 she experienced firsthand unrest between government supporters and the opposition. Due to the violence in the capital, he had to close the embassy and even leave his makeshift office in the meantime.
In 2015, the career diplomat succeeded Tim Guldimann as ambassador to Germany. Three years later, he appointed UN Secretary General Antonio Gutterres as special envoy for Myanmar, just months after the displacement of hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya Muslim minority. Since then, Schraner Burgener has held the newly created position.
Just a week ago, after the military coup in early February, Schraner Burgener met with the deputy chief of the board and warned him about violence against protesters.
Gattiker’s career is coming to an end
The still incumbent Secretary of State Gattiker can look back on a long career in the federal administration. In May 2001, he became the main secretary of the then Federal Commission for Aliens.
In 2003 he assumed the position of Deputy Director and Head of the Department of Integration and Citizenship of the Federal Office for Immigration, Integration and Emigration. Since 2005, he has directed the Division of Labor, Integration and Citizenship of the Federal Office for Migration. In November 2011, he assumed the leadership of the Federal Office, initially on an interim basis and finally in early 2012.
