Applications for advertised positions cannot be sent directly to the international organisations. In order for persons to be considered for secondment, they must first complete the admission procedure for the Swiss Expert Pool for Civilian Peace Building. The international organisations offer a number of positions in a wide variety of areas both at their headquarters and in their field missions, mostly for periods of six months, but also for periods of one or two years. Interested candidates submit applications for such fixed-term jobs directly to the international organisations. The conditions of hiring are determined by the organisations themselves.
Some organisations offer limited-term internships.
Candidates for these missions are recruited through cantonal and city police headquarters and through the Swiss Border Guard Corps. Recruiting is supervised by the Federal Police and the General Directorate of Customs of the Swiss Confederation. Election observers With the wave of democratisation that took place at the beginning of the 1990s, a pool of about 150 Swiss election observers was set up. Its members were trained in a series of courses and since then have been placed at the disposal of the election observer missions of various international organisations both for short and more prolonged periods. Following strong demand at the beginning of the 1990s, in the last few years there has been less need for international election observers.