On January 12, 2011, Federal Councilor Sommaruga announced that she would postpone the ready-made bill on the new regulation of shared custody for at least a year.
The discontent that has spread among the fathers since then needed an outlet.
With the “Schick en Stei” , the umbrella organization for shared parenthood ( GeCoBi ), in collaboration with other organizations, showed a clear, unambiguous reaction on February 11th.
Schick en Stei was able to mobilize hundreds of people within a few hours, and in less than a week over 1,600 people registered and together sent around 1,200 stones.
This success is due not least to the media presence and has far exceeded our expectations. We would like to thank everyone involved very much for this. We have received countless positive feedback and a lot of support and are very happy about it. The power of this campaign inspired us all.
Not least thanks to this incredible strength and the broad reaction of the population and also the media, Federal Councilor Sommaruga visited us on the first evening of the vigil in Bern.
In a longer conversation between the two presidents of GeCoBi and menschen.ch on the one hand and Federal Councilor Sommaruga on the other, we were able to explain and explain our concerns and fears to her. Ms. Sommaruga listened to us carefully and clearly took our concerns seriously.
This was expressed specifically in their binding proposal for further action.
Federal Councilor Sommaruga's proposal
Federal Councilor Sommaruga will have a round table of experts put together by April 2011. Representatives from fathers' and men's work, as well as representatives from women's organizations and children's rights groups, are invited to this round table. Overall, however, the round table should remain very small and should have the task of taking concrete steps to clean up the template and get it off the ground as quickly as possible.
What does this mean for us?
We have of course analyzed this question. We have come to the conclusion that we should interpret this offer for a round table as a serious interest on your part in rapid and effective action. Of course, it remains to be seen what such a round table will ultimately bring and also how it will be organized. Either way, it is an opportunity to have a significant influence on the further legislative process, something that fathers' organizations have been calling for for many years. Our demand was that Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf's current proposal be implemented immediately. Of course, we have to be aware that we don't know the details of this proposal, so we are asking for a pig in a poke. The current proposal to participate in the further process, however, opens up much further possibilities for us. Even though the additional round was initially triggered by concerns from the women's side, the constellation at the round table will ultimately give men's and fathers' organizations another opportunity to put forward their concerns, possibly to a greater extent than the current status of the proposal. For example, the issue of custody for unmarried parents in particular can become a topic of discussion again.
What's next?
Since our actions initially primarily demanded a hearing, we can declare this first goal to have been achieved. Federal Councilor Sommaruga listened to us, she assured us in front of the cameras that she understood our concerns and took them seriously.
Your offer to invite us to the round table is a respectable step towards an equal way of forming opinions.
The perspective of fathers and men is no longer excluded from the political process and that is remarkable.
Of course, we are also aware that we have “only” had one offer to talk so far. Only the composition and conduct of the round table will provide information about whether it will develop into a real dialogue or just another hour of chatting.
For this reason, we have decided the following for our two campaigns:
Vigil:
The vigil in its planned form (two people daily) ended with the handover of the stones to Ms. Sommaruga yesterday. We demanded a hearing, we received a hearing. However, we would like to continue to use the enthusiasm and willingness to participate and have therefore decided to continue the vigil, in a slightly different form. Instead of two people standing in front of the Federal Palace every day, we would instead like to hold a vigil on a larger scale every month on the 14th (due to the start of the campaign on February 14th). We hope that this structure will create a continuously growing movement that could perhaps attract large groups of people in a few months. Seen in this way, the participants who have registered for the vigil so far can be seen as a core group that will hopefully attract more and more people. We are convinced that we can launch a long-term, sustainable action that our politicians will continue to be unable to ignore.Those who have already registered for the vigil are currently being informed individually. Of course, we are also looking for additional participants for the new form of vigil. Interested parties should contact mahnwache@gecobi.ch
Schick en Stei
Due to the huge response to this campaign, we had to adjust our planned steps several times. Although we had initially planned to pack the stones individually, each with an individual letter on it, we realized over the weekend that this would have been the wrong way. The stones are not our message, they serve more as paperweights, but the actual message was and is the hundreds of letters from people addressed to Ms. Sommaruga. Fathers, mothers, children, grandparents, professionals, they all sent letters, shocking, encouraging, accusing, demanding.We could not and did not want to let these messages disappear on a big pile of stones and therefore decided to hand these letters directly to Ms. Sommaruga in the form of bound letters. We did this for the first time yesterday, along with 5 symbolic stone packages.
The first 500 stones also arrived at Bundesplatz yesterday morning. After these stones triggered the expected hectic pace, our logistics center agreed to temporarily store the stones for the Federal Palace.
We have decided to let the campaign continue. The response and people's need to write to Ms. Sommaruga simply overwhelmed us and we are very grateful for it.
However, out of respect for Ms. Sommaruga's kindness, we have decided to temporarily interrupt the physical shipping of the stones.
We are currently looking for an attractive solution for the stones together with the EJPD. Our goal from the start was to donate the stones to a charitable project after the campaign. We are very pleased that the EJPD also wants to support this and we are sure that we can find a good solution together.
GeCoBi sees itself as a constructive partner in building new social structures. We look forward to being able to visibly demonstrate this soon in the form of a stone donation.