Court name: Swiss Federal Court (BGer)
Date of decision:

The asylum application submitted by a refugee of Palestinian origin with Syrian travel document was rejected and the applicant was provisionally admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal has proven unreasonable. The applicant and his family submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness. The Swiss Federal Court recognised the statelessness of Palestinian refugees from Syria, for whom UNRWA protection or assistance is objectively no longer accessible.

Court name: The Court of The Hague
Date of decision:

This case concerns a stateless Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon, the Ein El-Hilweh camp, before applying for asylum in the Netherlands. The Court considered that the general information submitted shows a substantial deterioration in the situation for Palestinian stateless people in Lebanon and in particular in the Ein El-Hilweh camp. The Court found that the Secretary of State’s decision was flawed and that it must reconsider the application considering relevant factors, including whether UNRWA’s support met minimum requirements. An appeal is pending.

Court name: Federal Administrative Court [Bundesverwaltungsgericht - Tribunal administratif fédéral - FAC]
Date of decision:

The Federal Administrative Court (FAC) specifies its case law on the legitimate interest in the proceedings of an application for the recognition of statelessness. The FAC approves the appeal of a member of the Ajanib minority from Syria whose application was rejected by the State Secretariat for Migration and recognizes his stateless status.

Court name: Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Date of decision:

The case concerns a Belarusian individual who had entered the UK in 1998, whose asylum applications were refused and who spent the subsequent eighteen years in immigration bail as his identity could not be confirmed and he could not be deported to Belarus. He complained that the state of “limbo” in which he was as a result of his immigration bail constituted an infringement of his right to private life. He also alleged that he had become stateless as result of losing his Belarusian nationality. The court found that there was a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR. On the statelessness question, it was held he could not be considered a stateless person. 

Court name: Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Date of decision:

The communication concerned M.K.A.H., a stateless child, and whether Switzerland violated his rights under Articles 2 (2), 6, 7, 16, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 37 and 39 UNCRC when it decided to return him and his mother to Bulgaria, pursuant to the agreement between Switzerland and Bulgaria relating to the readmission of migrants in irregular situations, where they had previously obtained subsidiary protection.

Some of the findings of the Committee were that (i) Switzerland had not respected the best interests of the child nor heard him at the time of hearing the asylum request; (ii) the child ran a real risk of being subject to inhuman and degrading treatment in case of a return to Bulgaria; (iii) Switzerland had not sought to take the necessary measures to verify whether the child would be able to acquire a nationality in Bulgaria. The Committee also found that Article 7 UNCRC implicates that States must take the necessary positive actions to implement the right to acquire a nationality.