on Nationality.10 In 2015, the Swiss parliament rejected a proposal to examine an accession to the 1961
Convention.11 So far, no concrete steps have been undertaken to ratify either of these treaties.
11. Switzerland has additional international and regional obligations to protect the liberty and security of all
persons and to protect against arbitrary and unlawful detention. These obligations derive from the ICCPR
(Article 9) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR, Article 5) which protect the right to
liberty and security of the person and freedom from arbitrary detention. Importantly, Article 26 of the
1954 Convention additionally requires States to permit stateless persons ‘lawfully in’ their territory to
choose their place of residence and move freely within the State.12 International law requires that where
immigration detention is necessary for a legitimate purpose, it must be as brief as possible and must not
be indefinite.13 ‘Routine detention of individuals seeking protection on the grounds of statelessness is
arbitrary’.14 Stateless persons also benefit from the general application of international human rights
standards found in the core human rights treaties, such as equality before the law, non-discrimination or
adequate standard of living. Being associated to the European Union by means of bilateral agreements,
Switzerland is furthermore bound by some of the relevant secondary EU legislation in the field, in
particular the Return Directive15 and the Dublin-Regulation16 which entail certain standards relating to
the detention of migrants pending removal or a Dublin-transfer.
Statelessness in Switzerland
12. Article 1.1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons defines a stateless person
as someone “who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.” According
to the numbers provided by the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) for 2016, 471 persons were
registered as stateless, 184 as ‘without nationality’ and 784 as ‘state unknown’17 in that year.18 In 2015
those numbers were slightly lower with 445 persons registered as stateless, 182 as ‘without nationality’
10
Federal Council, Onzième rapport sur la Suisse et les conventions du Conseil de l’Europe, 24 August 2016, p. 6840, available at:
https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/federal-gazette/2016/6823.pdf; Postulate Paul Günter, Adhésion à la Convention sur la réduction
des cas d'apatridie (05.3737), available at: https://www.parlament.ch/fr/ratsbetrieb/suche-curiavista/geschaeft?AffairId=20053737; Federal Council, Message concernant la révision totale de la loi fédérale sur l’acquisition et la
perte de la nationalité suisse, 4 March 2011, available at: https://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/federal-gazette/2011/2639.pdf, p. 2841;
Statement by the Federal Council of 11 May 2015 to parliamentary interpellation Pierre-Alain Fridez, Apatridie des enfants. Où en
est la Suisse? (16.3126), available at: https://www.parlament.ch/fr/ratsbetrieb/suche-curia-vista/geschaeft?AffairId=20163126.
11
Postulate Nadine Masshardt, Convention sur la réduction des cas d'apatridie (15.3269), available at:
https://www.parlament.ch/fr/ratsbetrieb/suche-curia-vista/geschaeft?AffairId=20153269.
12
According to UNHCR and as confirmed by the drafting history of the 1954 Convention, persons who have applied for
statelessness status and who enter into a statelessness determination procedure in a country are ‘lawfully in’ that country.
UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, 30 June 2014, para 135. Available at:
http://www.refworld.org/docid/53b676aa4.html.
13
UNHCR, Guidelines on the Applicable Criteria and Standards relating to the Detention of Asylum-Seekers and Alternatives to
Detention, 2012, paras 15-21, 34. Available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/503489533b8.html.
14
UNHCR, Statelessness Handbook (note 12), para 112. See also European Network on Statelessness, Protecting Stateless Persons
from Arbitrary Detention: A Regional Toolkit for Practitioners, para 2.2. Available at:
http://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/ENS_Detention_Toolkit.pdf.
15
Directive 2008/115/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on common standards and
procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, OJ L 348/98.
16
Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and
mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in
one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person, OJ L 180/31.
17
Sometimes the SEM also uses the category ‘nationality unknown’, e.g. in the statistics on unaccompanied minors in Switzerland,
available at: https://www.sem.admin.ch/dam/data/sem/publiservice/statistik/asylstatistik/statistiken_uma/uma-2016-f.pdf.
18
State Secretariat for Migration, Statistics December 2016, available at:
https://www.sem.admin.ch/dam/data/sem/publiservice/statistik/auslaenderstatistik/2016/12/2-10-Best-Tot-Kat-d-2016-12.xlsx.
4