Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Switzerland continues to offer protection to Afghan girls

Afghan women
Conditions have deteriorated for Afghan women under the Taliban Keystone

Afghan women and girls will continue to receive asylum in Switzerland – a measure introduced in summer 2023.

Do you want to read our weekly top stories? Subscribe here.

On Monday, the House of representatives rejected a motion seeking to reverse the asylum practice.

The parliamentary chamber reached its decision with a razor-thin majority – 92 votes to 91 with ten abstentions.

The proposal by People’s Party parliamentarian Gregor Rutz was dismissed. However, another motion concern the same matter is still pending in the Senate.

The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) decided to introduce the measure in July 2023 following a recommendation from the European Asylum Agency.

The move was justified by recognising that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan had deteriorated since the Taliban came to power and women’s basic rights were severely restricted.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

More than 1,100 Swiss cheeses on show in Lugano

More

Swiss Cheese Awards winners announced

This content was published on The three best Swiss cheeses were chosen on Friday in Lugano from over 1100 products submitted to an international jury.

Read more: Swiss Cheese Awards winners announced
Switzerland delivers equipment worth 5.6 million to Ukraine

More

Switzerland will deliver rubble removal equipment to Ukraine

This content was published on Thirty rubble removal machines and thirty fire-fighting pumps: this is the equipment that Switzerland will be delivering to the Ukraine in the next few days. The total value of these goods is 5.6 million Swiss francs.

Read more: Switzerland will deliver rubble removal equipment to Ukraine

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR