The case concerned the application for asylum submitted in Switzerland by an Afghan family consisting of parents and three minor children. The SEM rejected the request in 2018 and the case was sent back to SEM following appeal in 2019. Before SEM, the applicants stated that they were ethnic Hazara of Shiite faith and complained that due to ethnicity they face multiple difficulties in Afghanistan, are discriminated against and are hindered from exercising their religious beliefs. By decision of 16 March 2020, the SEM rejected the asylum claim and ordered the expulsion, with postponement on grounds of favorable provisional admission.

In the appeal, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed the negative decision and the SEM conclusions. It noted that SEM found issues related to the credibility of statements because there were contradictions on the facts presented, no evidence was adduced on the alleged death of A's brother, and there were doubts on the reasons to have fled the country. The Supreme Administrative Court found not credible that the family remained in their house for several weeks after the killing of the brother, but then left it in a hurry and that the killing of the brother was linked to an alleged cooperation of the applicant with the Taliban while the applicant continued to exercise his job with a security authority. In the absence of any evidence related to the death of the brother, the court found implausible the applicant's assertations on the reasons for leaving the country as having a nexus with the brother's death. In view of the multiple contradictions found in the statements related to asylum but also on the fact that they did not apply ion other countries before Switzerland (which was deemed untruthful as there was evidence on their applications in Austria, Hungary and France, and subsidiary protection granted in Hungary. The overall credibility of the submissions the personal credibility of the applicants was negatively assessed. The court stated that even if the submissions would have been deemed credible, they were irrelevant for the asylum claim.

The AFC reiterated the assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan to define groups of persons who are exposed to an increased risk of persecution due to their exposure. These include, among others, persons who are close to the Afghan government or the international community or are perceived as supporters of it, as well as Western-oriented persons or persons who do not correspond to Afghan society for other reasons.

The Federal Administrative Court stated with regard to the applicants' claim on basis of ethnicity, citing its previous case-law, that Hazara would not be subject to targeted persecution solely because of their ethnicity and that collective persecution of Hazara in Afghanistan could not be assumed, even after the take over power by the Taliban. The FAC assessed that belonging to Hazara ethnic group cannot in itself be relevant for asylum.

The FAC noted that the applicants referred in a submission of 1 November 2023 to a change in SEM practice regarding female Afghan asylum applicants who would be recognised as victims of discrimination in legislation and of religiously motivated persecution, leading to fulfilling requirements for refugee status.

The FAC mentioned that although persecution on the basis of gender must be taken into account when assessing the grounds for refugee status, however, the grounds enshrined in Article 3 of the Asylum Act cannot be extended and the assessment is based on individual credibility examination of each case on whether a female applicant has a well-founded fear of persecution.  

The FAC reiterated that it does not assume collective persecution based on female membership of women and girls in Afghanistan  and stated that they standard is very high, and that, when defining collective persecution, the Federal Administrative Court also interpreted the term "unbearable psychological pressure" within the meaning of Art. 3 of the Asylum Act as existing “if individuals or parts of a population are systematically exposed to severe or repeated encroachments on their human rights by the state and these encroachments reach such an intensity that a dignified life no longer appears possible”. It referenced to a judgement of 22 November 2023 where it found an unbearable psychological pressure in the case of two young, unmarried Afghan applicants who had completed the 12th grade, wanted to study and also feared persecution by the Taliban due to the activities of their father, a journalist recognized as a refugee with asylum in Switzerland. The AFC explained that in this specific case the gender of the applicants was taken into account jointly with other grounds for persecution and subsequently affirmed persecution in the individual case.

In the present case, the court found that the applicant is a married women, with no risk of violence or of forced marriage in Afghanistan, and she did not state to have abandoned school as a reason for fleeing and she did not have rebelled against wearing a burqa in school. The court found that the applicant B did not adduce any further individual reasons for fleeing the country and found no reason to add one or more motives for persecution to the gender affiliation in addition to the individual examination to define collective persecution. On the SEM policy regarding Afghan women and girls, the court stated that an alleged assumption by SEM that there would be collective persecution of women and girls in Afghanistan based solely on their female gender, without requiring a further, individual motive for persecution would be neither in accordance with the law nor with the practice of the Federal Administrative Court, since collective persecution of women and girls cannot be assumed on the basis of gender alone, but only on the basis of additional motives for persecution.

The court concluded to the lack of credibility on the reasons for fleeing the country as well as a lack of relevance for asylum of the claims presented. The same conclusions affected the children's applications for asylum.