The promotion of human rights is an objective of Swiss foreign policy. In cooperation with other states, civil society and experts, it tries to improve the human-rights situation for as many people as possible throughout the world. This is based on Switzerland’s long humanitarian tradition, and the conviction that the protection of human rights serves the cause of peace and international stability.

There remain serious obstacles to the global implementation of human rights. It also depends on the goodwill of individual states whether human rights are respected or not. The international community is employing new judicial institutions in the attempt to create respect for human rights, among them:

• the expanded European Court of Human Rights
• the United Nations Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia
• the International Criminal Court
• the UN Human Rights Council.
  

 
Switzerland concentrates on areas in which it can make a special contribution by virtue of its experience and obligations. These particularly include:

• The global defence and promotion of basic human rights. Switzerland is especially committed to combating torture and abolishing the death penalty. It also seeks to take account of the growing importance of economic, social and cultural rights.
• The protection of especially vulnerable groups: minorities, children, women, the aged, defenders of human rights (groups and individuals working particularly for human rights), refugees and prisoners
• Human rights must be consistently taken into account in all foreign-policy activities. In addition, globalization must be exploited to reinforce the protection of human rights.

Switzerland has a wide variety of mechanisms at its disposal to reinforce respect for human rights and combat human-rights violations.

• At bilateral level Switzerland approaches an individual state. By means of diplomatic interventions and human-rights dialogues, Switzerland works to increase respect for human rights in a number of countries.
• At multilateral level Switzerland coordinates its activities with other states. These generally take the form of cooperation in international organizations, for example the UN Human Rights Council, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe.