A/HRC/4/19/Add.2 page 20 65. Moreover, neither civil nor criminal law in Switzerland grants an association the right to bring legal proceedings on behalf of or for victims of racism, contrary to the situation in other countries. However, in certain cantons, a request may be submitted to a judge, who decides on a case-by-case basis. This gap in Swiss legislation has long been criticized by civil society and the Federal Commission against Racism. 66. Moreover, Switzerland is one of the rare European countries that does not have a national institution devoted entirely to human rights, in spite of the existence, for the past five years, of a parliamentary initiative calling for the establishment of a federal human rights commission. 67. The Special Rapporteur notes that the Swiss authorities, at both the federal and cantonal levels, have recognized the existence of problems related to racism and xenophobia, but that they have considered that these problems are not really serious, or that they are only a “secondary phenomenon”.36 He noted that this assessment varies from department to department and according to the hierarchical position of the person questioned: persons who are closest to social realities more openly acknowledge the existence of manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia; this acknowledgement tends to become more diffuse at higher levels in the hierarchy. Most of the members of foreign communities and national minorities with whom the Special Rapporteur met stated, often with great emotion, that they experienced racism and discrimination on a daily basis and that there was an overall atmosphere of xenophobia; they expressed a feeling of loneliness within the population and their fear of certain institutions, particularly the police. The most affected communities and groups seem, at present, to be blacks, Jews, Travellers, asylum-seekers and Muslims or persons of Muslim culture. 68. Like all modern societies, Swiss society is faced with a process of far-reaching multiculturalism. While the previous waves of migration came from European countries, the new migrations come from regions of Eastern Europe and from other geocultural regions and areas of the world. Swiss society is therefore tending to be more marked than in the past by a higher degree of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. In Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe, the challenge to national identity posed by this new diversity is a source of identity-related tensions. The political, legal and cultural awareness, recognition and treatment of these tensions are crucial factors in the construction of a harmonious multicultural society. However, Switzerland illustrates, in a particularly striking manner, one of the underlying causes of racism and xenophobia, namely the politicization of identity-related tensions that is embodied not only by the existence, according to civil society, of political parties with racist and xenophobic platforms and with the ability to implement them through government alliances, but also the gradual infiltration of these platforms into the political programmes of democratic parties. This most often takes the form of legislation and policies that approach immigration and asylum issues solely from a security point of view and criminalize immigrants and asylum-seekers. 36 Letter addressed to the Special Rapporteur by the Federal Office for Migration, p. 1.