In Uzbekistan cotton is harvested with the aid of government-organised child labour. Every year the Uzbek state summons up between 1.5 and 2 million children for the cotton harvest. Neither children nor families are remunerated for their work and the pr...
An inquiry commissioned by the Federal Council found out that Swiss authorities never treated applications for asylum of Iraqis which were submitted at the embassies in Egypt and Syria between 2006 and 2008. This is the result of a directive issued by t...
In its decision of December 2011, the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) convicted the Swiss subsidiary of easyJet because of its practice towards disabled passengers in wheelchairs. Up to now the airline only transported wheelchair users if they w...
Against the proposition of its consultative commission, the National Council has accepted a ban on cluster munitions. The bill is now being returned for detailed discussion to the National Council Security Policy Committee (SIK-N). The National Council&...
In the past weeks, several newly arriving asylum seekers have been rejected at the doors of the centres of accommodation and provisioning in Basel, Vallorbe and Chiasso. Despite frost and cold, some of them had to spend several nights without shelter - ...
The implementation of the new provisions of the Swiss Civil Code for the fight against bogus marriages is problematic since rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants cannot be denied the right to marriage (Art.12 ECHR) systematically. The Swiss Fed...
Special deportation flights for foreigners resisting an extradition are mainly performed to African countries. Between October 2010 and July 2011, members of the National Commission for the Prevention of Torture (NCPT) have escorted six such flights as ...
A legal opinion commissioned by a coalition of NGOs strengthens the call for an inclusion of human rights issues in the free trade agreement between Switzerland and China currently being negotiated. The legal opinion voices the apprehension that a stric...
