Switzerland

LGBTIQ people enjoy some protections in Switzerland. Same-sex couples can marry and adopt. Trans people are allowed to change their legal gender markers on the basis of self-determination. While there is no legal recognition of nonbinary gender markers, the Swiss Federal Council is working to improve the situation of nonbinary people. A significant majority of people in Switzerland supported same-sex marriage in a national referendum in 2021, but there is stronger prejudice toward trans and intersex people.

In 2020, Swiss voters approved a law criminalizing homophobic hate speech and discrimination, extending existing protections for race and religion to sexual orientation. However, the law does not provide protections based on sex characteristics, gender identity, or gender expression. Nonconsensual medical interventions on intersex children are still legal; a 2022 motion to ban them was ultimately not adopted by the Federal Council.

Several Pride events are held annually, and there have been openly gay and lesbian politicians across the political spectrum. However, according to a civil society report on “monitoring of LGBTQ-phobic discrimination and violence,” hate speech and discrimination remain serious issues, and hate crime reports increased by 50 percent between 2020 and 2021. Conversion practices have been documented in Switzerland, with laws passed to restrict these practices in some cities.

In a July 2025 ruling, the European Court of Human Rights found that Switzerland violated the right to respect for private life and the right to an effective remedy for Caster Semenya, a South African woman athlete, by failing to protect her against discriminatory World Athletics regulations that required her to artificially lower her natural testosterone levels to compete. Such regulations have been used in many contexts to exclude intersex women from sport.