Swiss Confederation
Head of state and government: Didier Burkhalter

The Swiss National Commission for the Prevention of Torture (NCPT) and NGOs continued to raise concern about the use of force during deportations. "Popular initiatives" that were incompatible with international law were left unimplemented.

Discrimination

In March, the UN CERD Committee recommended that the government introduce a clear and comprehensive definition of direct and indirect racial discrimination covering all fields of law. The Committee further called on the government to establish effective data collection on discrimination and to take measures to prevent targeting of individuals for identity checks, searches and other police operations on the grounds of race and ethnicity.

In November, the Administrative Court in the canton of St Gallen ruled that a school's ban on a Muslim student wearing a headscarf was disproportionate.

In September 2013, residents of the canton of Ticino had voted to ban the wearing of the full face veil. The ban cannot enter into force without the approval of the Federal Parliament.

Refugees and asylum-seekers

The NCPT and domestic NGOs continued to raise concerns about the treatment of asylum-seekers, including violations of the non-refoulement principle and the use of force during removals.

The NCPT continued to observe and document disproportionate use of force and restraints during the transfer of people facing deportation from detention centres to the airport. To tackle varying practices by different police forces, the NCPT called for uniform practice and national regulation to be introduced by the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Justice and Police. The NCPT also called for greater respect for the principle of the best interests of the child, in response to the ongoing practice of temporarily separating children from their parents during forced returns.

In May, the Federal Office for Migration (FOM) made public the recommendations of internal and external reviews, following the arrests in Sri Lanka in July and August 2013 of two Tamil asylum-seekers forcibly returned from Switzerland. The two men were detained for several months by Sri Lankan authorities and transferred to a "rehabilitation" camp. In September 2013, following concerns raised by NGOs, the FOM had temporarily halted forced returns to Sri Lanka pending the outcome of the reviews. After a further fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka by Swiss authorities, the FOM announced in May that it would review the cases of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers whose applications had received a final rejection, and resume removals to Sri Lanka.

Prison conditions

On 26 February, the Swiss Federal Court ruled that two prisoners being held in Champ-Dollon prison, in Geneva, were subject to inhumane conditions that breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The two prisoners were held consecutively for three months, confined for 23 hours per day with four other detainees in a cell measuring 23 square meters designed for three detainees, without access to any activities. The NCPT and Swiss NGOs repeatedly raised concerns about overcrowding in Champ-Dollon prison, which as of November held 811 persons in a space designed to accommodate 376. Disturbances at the prison in February resulted in injuries to eight guards and around 30 prisoners.

Legislative, constitutional or institutional developments

In March, the CERD Committee recommended establishing an independent mechanism to ensure that "popular initiatives" do not lead to laws that are incompatible with Switzerland's obligations under international human rights law. Several "popular initiatives" or referendums put forward by the Swiss People's Party were not implemented due to their incompatibility with international law, including the referendum known as the "Deportation initiative", passed in 2010. This referendum had called for a constitutional amendment to allow the automatic deportation of foreign nationals convicted of specified criminal offences. Similarly, the "Mass immigration initiative", which sought to introduce an arbitrary annual immigration quota, also remained unimplemented.

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