Imagine being sent back to a country where nearly half the population needs humanitarian assistance, millions struggle to access food, housing, healthcare, and work, and the authorities have been accused of persecuting women, girls, and minorities.
Now imagine being told that you can rebuild your life there because you are young, healthy, employable, and have relatives in the capital. That is now possible in Switzerland.
On 19 August 2026, Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court (FAC) upheld the removal of a young Afghan man to Afghanistan. The judgment does not mean all Afghan men can be deported. It confirms that removal to Afghanistan remains generally unreasonable, but may be considered reasonable in exceptional cases involving particularly favourable individual circumstances. The Court’s official media release sets out the criteria, which will now guide the assessment of similar cases.
This is the second of three newsletters on how protection is narrowing in Switzerland. In the first part, we examined Switzerland’s returns of recognised refugees and their families to Greece. This second part turns to Afghanistan; the final newsletter will examine returns to Turkey.
How did Switzerland get here?
Following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Switzerland generally treated removal to Afghanistan as unreasonable. In April 2025, however, the State Secretariat for Migration changed its practice.
Under the new approach, healthy adult Afghan men who are alone in Switzerland and have a stable and sustainable support network in Afghanistan may receive a removal order if their asylum application is rejected. SEM states that enforcement of removal became reasonable for this group, in certain circumstances, from mid-April 2025.
The policy does not mean that Afghanistan is considered safe. It assumes that some men may be able to survive there despite the country’s wider conditions. But, as the United Nations has documented, relatives may be unable to provide housing, income, healthcare, protection, or a realistic route into employment. The Swiss Refugee Council has therefore questioned whether age, health, employability, and family connections can guarantee safe and sustainable reintegration.
The FAC has now reviewed this approach in a reference judgment. It confirmed that removal to Afghanistan remains generally unreasonable, but held that it may be possible in exceptional cases where particularly favourable individual circumstances exist and where the person would not face a particular danger from the Taliban authorities or a concrete risk of treatment contrary to international law. The Court applied this assessment to Afghanistan as a whole. The FAC’s official judgment summary sets out these conditions.
The case concerned a young, healthy adult man with no family responsibilities. The FAC also considered his professional experience, his Pashtun ethnicity, and the support available through a solid family network in Kabul. It concluded that he did not face a particular danger from the Taliban regime and that removal was reasonable in his case.
The judgment is final and cannot be appealed. It may therefore affect other pending cases, although it does not automatically decide them.
By the end of June 2026, SEM had issued removal orders to around 320 Afghan men. Most appealed, and more than 200 of those appeals were still pending before the FAC when the judgment was issued. SRF reported that the outcome of these cases remains uncertain: the FAC must examine them individually, and it is not yet known how many people will ultimately be considered removable.
A removal order is not the same as a deportation. Before this judgment, Switzerland had returned Afghan nationals convicted of serious offences, including three people sent to Kabul in March 2025. It had not yet removed rejected asylum seekers solely on the basis of the 2025 policy. If an appeal is rejected and the removal order becomes final, SEM can then begin organising the person’s removal. SRF reported on the earlier criminal-removal flights.
What awaits people returned to Afghanistan?
The legal assessment applied by the SEM and FAC should be individual. The reality awaiting a person returned to Afghanistan is shaped by a nationwide crisis of poverty, hunger, displacement, weak public services, and systematic restrictions imposed by the Taliban authorities.
Afghanistan is already struggling to support its existing population. In 2026, approximately 21.9 million people – around 45% of Afghanistan’s population – are expected to need humanitarian assistance. Around 17.4 million people are projected to face crisis-level or worse food insecurity, including approximately 4.7 million people facing emergency levels of hunger with 3.7 million children suffering from acute malnutrion. The humanitarian situation is summarised by the UN and humanitarian information services.
This is the context into which Switzerland intends to return people. Afghanistan is not a functioning system waiting to receive them. It is a country in which existing residents are already struggling to obtain food, housing, healthcare, clean water, education, and work.
The pressure is being intensified by the scale of returns from neighbouring countries. The United Nations estimates that nearly 2.7 million Afghans could return from Pakistan and Iran between April and December 2026. Almost 5.9 million people had already returned since 2023, increasing Afghanistan’s population by more than 10%. Many of those returning have limited assets, few livelihood prospects, and no realistic way to support themselves independently.
The newly-launched UN response plan for returnees is an emergency operation, not a functioning integration system. Of its US$529.2 million, US$100.7 million is allocated to immediate assistance at border crossings – including food, cash, healthcare, nutrition, protection, water, sanitation, and transport – while US$428.5 million is intended for 35 receiving districts, funding shelter, education, healthcare, livelihoods, documentation, and protection. The response plan is designed to prevent people from being left without the basic conditions for survival.
Even this emergency response will not reach everyone at risk. It is expected to reach only around 40% of the most vulnerable returnees, although approximately 70% meet the vulnerability criteria. UN monitoring shows that returnees arrive in communities already affected by poverty, food insecurity, drought, displacement, and limited public services. They may require food, drinking water, transport, temporary accommodation, medical care, identity documents, and help enrolling their children in school.
Emergency assistance does not create a sustainable life. IOM assessments found that only a small minority of surveyed returnees were fully employed or owned a business. More than half could not meet their basic expenses, while 95% had no productive assets or property, 79% were living in transitional accommodation, and 17% had already been evicted. Many relied on loans, donations, or other external support.
These conditions leave people vulnerable to exploitation. Without housing, food, or work, returnees may borrow money, withdraw children from school, send children to work, accept dangerous employment, or become dependent on strangers. The United Nations has warned that returning Afghans face growing risks of trafficking and exploitation as humanitarian and economic crises deepen.
Documentation can determine whether a person can access basic services. Identity documents are needed to access assistance, healthcare, education, employment, and legal protection. Yet UNHCR monitoring found that around 71% of surveyed households had at least one family member without the necessary civil documentation. Among refugee returnees, that figure rose to 80%. Without documentation, people may be unable to prove their identity, register children for school, access services, claim assistance, or resolve disputes over housing and land. Refugee returnees and undocumented households were also among those most at risk of eviction, while nearly half of surveyed households identified places that women and girls could not access.
A family network cannot substitute for a functioning protection system. Relatives and host communities may themselves be living in poverty and unable to provide for the basic needs of returnees. A person may have relatives in Kabul while still having no realistic way to rebuild their life there.
This is the reality against which the FAC’s language of “social and professional reintegration” should be tested. Reintegration is not achieved because someone has relatives in Kabul or has worked before. It requires housing, income, documents, healthcare, physical safety, and a meaningful protection from the authorities. The evidence shows that these conditions cannot simply be presumed.
This is the country to which Switzerland is now prepared to return some Afghan men. A country not only facing isolated security incidents, but one where millions depend on humanitarian assistance, where returnees may arrive without housing or documentation, where employment is scarce, where families resort to debt and child labour to survive, and where essential services are already unable to meet existing needs.
A broader shift
Switzerland’s decision forms part of a broader European push to make returns to Afghanistan possible. In October 2025, twenty European states called for coordinated voluntary and forced returns, stronger European coordination, a greater role for Frontex, and closer cooperation with the de facto regime in Afghanistan. The European Migration Network Belgium reported on the initiative.
The EU has since acknowledged technical-level contacts with the Taliban authorities concerning migration and returns. Although this does not amount to formal recognition, such cooperation risks normalising relations with a regime accused of systematic human-rights violations.
In July 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme leader, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the Taliban’s chief justice. The Court found reasonable grounds to believe that both men were responsible for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender and political grounds.
Cooperation on returns raises serious questions about accountability and legitimacy. Contact with the Taliban cannot be mistaken as evidence that Afghanistan is safe or as a substitute for assessing the risk faced by each person.
Afghan women and girls
The restrictive shift is not limited to Afghan men.
Since 17 July 2023, SEM has applied a practice recognising that Afghan women and girls may face persecution because of the discriminatory laws and religious restrictions imposed by the Taliban. Their applications are still examined individually, and questions such as protection in a third country remain relevant. SEM’s factsheet explains the practice.
These restrictions affect education, employment, movement, healthcare, family life, expression, and participation in public life. They are imposed through Taliban laws and policies, not merely by private individuals. UNAMA reports that women in some areas must be accompanied by a mahram to receive healthcare, while female health workers face the same requirement. UN Women reports that Afghanistan remains the only country systematically banning girls from secondary education and women from university.
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On 17 September 2026, the National Council adopted a motion to reverse the 2023 practice by 101 votes to 84. The motion is now before the Federal Assembly. It would not itself change Swiss asylum law or immediately end the current practice. The Federal Council opposed it, stressing that SEM already examines applications individually.
The new motion seeks to assess Afghan women’s claims without the current recognition that Taliban-imposed conditions may themselves amount to persecution. It could particularly affect women who have spent years in Iran, Pakistan, or Turkey – countries that deport Afghans to Afghanistan and where refugees face serious protection risks.
Its significance lies in challenging the recognition of Afghan women’s gender- and nationality-specific vulnerability. If implemented, it could narrow protection by requiring assessments that give less weight to the nationwide system of restrictions imposed by the Taliban.
This is particularly concerning because the International Criminal Court has found reasonable grounds to believe that senior Taliban leaders are responsible for persecution on gender grounds. Leaders of a regime under international scrutiny for crimes against humanity are increasingly being treated, in Switzerland and elsewhere, as representatives of a country to which certain people can be returned.
What gives us hope
The FAC’s judgment is final and cannot be appealed. But it does not decide every case. Each person facing removal still has the right to have their individual circumstances examined carefully and lawfully. A family network must be tested against reality: can it provide housing, income, healthcare, and protection? Has the person’s history, health, identity, and risk of persecution been properly examined?
These questions can change the outcome of an individual case. They are also questions that require evidence: medical records, proof of family circumstances, information about housing and employment, documentation of past persecution, and country-of-origin evidence.
This is where legal support matters. AsyLex helps people prepare appeals, gather evidence, challenge inadequate reasoning, and ensure that removal decisions are not treated as automatic simply because a person appears young, healthy, or employable on paper.
A restrictive judgment is not the end of every legal avenue. But those avenues only exist if cases are identified early, evidence is gathered in time, and people have access to qualified support before removal takes place.
That is the work our teams do, and it is why your support matters.
Thank you for reading to the end. This is the second part of our series, looking at how the narrowing of protection is playing out in returns to Afghanistan. If you haven’t read the first part on Greece yet, you can find it here. And stay tuned for the next chapter, where we’ll turn to Turkey.
Follow along, share this with anyone who should see it, and, if you’re able, support the legal work that keeps these cases from ending in silence.