In spite of the fervent appeal of the Christian Churches, the Swiss Council of States approved a new law on asylum on Thursday 17 March. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), “it is one of the most restrictive legislative acts in the whole of Europe and comes at a time when the number of asylum seekers arriving in Switzerland has dropped to its lowest level since 1987”. In a joint communiqué, the three Christian Churches present in Switzerland (Protestant, Catholic and Christian-Catholic) and the Federation of Jewish communities had listed a series of proposals to not “restrict any further the right to asylum”. The Council of States not only ignored these recommendations, but approved a law that contains a series of extremely restrictive regulations to gain access to right to asylum. For example on the basis of the new law, asylum seekers unable to furnish travel and identity documents, shall have no right to any substantial examination of their application. The Council of States further refused to recognise the option of granting humanitarian status, which would have given a more suitable legal status to those recognized in need of protection and declared its support for the current principle of “provisional admission”.
