Nathalie Fontanet, president of Switzerland's Geneva canton, told Le Temps newspaper that the country's image was at stake if the international institutions in the city, and the values they uphold, were weakened by Trump's funding cuts and pullouts.

Geneva hosts around 40 international organisations and more than 400 non-governmental organisations.

It is home to several major branches of the United Nations, such as its health, refugee, human rights, labour, telecoms, intellectual property and weather agencies, plus other major institutions like the World Trade Organization, the Red Cross and the Global Fund, and NGOs like Doctors Without Borders.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the United States was cancelling 83 percent of programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

"Given the attack on the values that define the international organisations and NGOs that we welcome on our soil, the few reactions from the Federal Council last Friday do not seem to me to be up to the challenge," Fontanet said, referring to the national government.

"I have not heard any reaction or commitment on the threats to multilateralism. Switzerland's image is likely to be weakened or revised if we ultimately let everything that has been built weaken.

"The rest of our country must not imagine that this situation and its consequences would only concern Geneva."

The canton has proposed providing funding towards NGOs to avoid redundancies.

Fontanet said the canton was not looking to provide an economic rescue but support organisations that worked toward things essential to Geneva's international identity, such as the laws of war, the treatment of prisoners and the prohibition of torture.

However, she said Geneva ultimately could not fill the financial gap.

"We feel very worried... with the withdrawal of the United States, we are witnessing a tsunami," Fontanet said.

"No country will be able to compensate for the withdrawal of American funds, which represented an average of 25 percent of the funding of international Geneva organisations."

Fontanet said international Geneva represented 36,000 jobs, formed part of the canton's economy and kept hotels, restaurants and shops in business.

Any organisations leaving Geneva "will have an effect on the entire economy", she said.

"The crisis in international Geneva will inevitably have consequences for the whole country, and of course for the world," she added.