Afghan family leaves Switzerland with Italian guarantees

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had previously ruled that Switzerland could not send an Afghan family back to Italy without guarantees from the Italian authorities on how the family would be treated Keystone

A family of Afghan asylum seekers, who had gone to the European Court of Human Rights to stop being deported from Switzerland to Italy, has left Switzerland.

According to a ruling by the Strasbourg court in November, Switzerland would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights if it were to send the family back to Italy under the Dublin agreement without having first obtained individual guarantees from the Italian authorities that applicants would be properly looked after and the family kept together.

The family, which includes six children, finally left Switzerland on Tuesday, with Mario Morcone, responsible for civil liberties and migration at the Italian interior ministry, saying Italy guaranteed that the family would not be split up and they would stay in suitable accommodation.

Previously, the Swiss authorities had refused to examine the asylum application of the Afghan family and decided to send them back to Italy. The family had arrived on the Italian Calabrian coast by boat in July 2011 before travelling to Austria, where their application was rejected, and later to Switzerland where they filed a request in November 2011.

The family appealed against the asylum rejection by the Swiss authorities with help from the Protestant Swiss Church Aid (EPER) organisationExternal link. The European Court issued a ruling to suspend the Swiss expulsion order.

‘Insalubrious conditions’

Europe’s top human rights court External linkfound that the Swiss authorities did not possess sufficient assurances that, if returned to Italy, the applicants would be taken charge of in a manner adapted to the age of the children. The court ruling had been influenced by the situation of the reception system in Italy and the absence of detailed and reliable information concerning the specific facility the family would be sent to. 

It stated: “The possibility that a significant number of asylum seekers removed to that country might be left without accommodation or might be accommodated in overcrowded facilities, in insalubrious and violent conditions, was not unfounded. The Swiss authorities were obliged to obtain assurances from their Italian counterparts that on their arrival in Italy the applicants would be received in facilities and in conditions adapted to the age of the children, and that the family would be kept together.”

The Dublin agreement, which Switzerland joined in 2008, stipulates that the country where a person first applies for asylum is responsible for that individual’s asylum process. Asylum seekers who travel to another country and reapply for asylum are sent back to the country where they first applied.