Refugee aid wants uniform humanitarian protection status
Published: Friday, Feb 23rd 2024, 10:20
Updated At: Friday, Feb 23rd 2024, 10:21
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The Swiss Refugee Council (SFH) wants to replace the provisional admission and protection status S applied to Ukraine with a uniform humanitarian protection status. According to the organization, this should create legal equality in the future.
The uniform protection status should apply to all persons in need of protection. The application of protection status S following the Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the legal inequalities regarding the status of temporary admission, the SFH announced on Friday.
Nonetheless, protection status S has proven its worth with regard to the integration of Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland: Switzerland has been able to accept numerous people in need of protection from Ukraine without complications and without overburdening the asylum procedure.
In the view of the SFH, Status S should therefore be continued for the time being, as decided by the Federal Council in November. The number of applications remains very high at around 20,000 last year. After two years of war, a prospect of peace in the near future also seems unlikely, the SFH added.
SFH rejects restriction
In view of the fighting and ongoing rocket fire throughout the country, the security situation throughout Ukraine remains unstable. The SFH therefore rejects any restriction of protection status S as well as incentives to increase the return rate of Ukrainians, as called for by the Finance Committee of the Council of States (FK-S).
According to the organization, the status should only be lifted when there is an end to the war in Ukraine as part of a peace agreement and the security situation on the ground is guaranteed by independent international organizations.
The SFH therefore welcomes the fact that the federal government, in consultation with the cantons, has prepared a concept at an early stage on how a future revocation of Status S should proceed. The abolition of status S should also take place in coordination with the European Union (EU), it added.
According to the latest figures released by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) on Friday, 65,136 people with active protection status S were registered in Switzerland. The status of 21,038 people was terminated.
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