Joint Submission
to the Human Rights Council
at the 42nd Session
of the Universal Periodic Review
SWITZERLAND
Introduction
1. humanrights.ch, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), and the European
Network on Statelessness (ENS) make this joint submission to the Universal Periodic
Review (UPR), on the right to a nationality and human rights challenges pertaining to
statelessness in Switzerland. The co-submitters have developed the submission in close
collaboration with Maureen Grossman, Jyothi Kanics and Barbara von Rütte. Additional
input has been provided by Aleksejs Ivashuk.
2. This submission focuses on:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
The Lack of a Formal Statelessness Determination Procedure
The Right of Every Child to Acquire a Nationality
Deprivation of citizenship
Protection for stateless persons and people at risk of statelessness fleeing the
war in Ukraine
3. humanrights.ch is a Swiss non-profit organisation established in 1999 with the main
aim of gathering and providing information, raising public awareness, monitoring state
action and counselling on human rights issues and the human rights situation in
Switzerland. humanrights.ch has particular expertise in coordinating and publishing
reports and opinions on the human rights situation in Switzerland and has contributed
to a number of reports to UN and Council of Europe monitoring bodies.1
4. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) is the first and only human rights NGO
dedicated to working on statelessness at the global level. ISI’s mission is to promote
inclusive societies by realising and protecting everyone’s right to a nationality. The
Institute has made over 90 country specific UPR submissions on the human rights of
stateless persons. ISI has also compiled summaries of the key human rights challenges
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For more information, see: https://www.humanrights.ch/de/.
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