Swiss Defamation and Honour Law: Criminal Complaints and Civil Claims

Someone arriving at this page is usually trying to work out which of several different Swiss rules actually covers what happened to them, or wondering whether a deadline has already passed. Swiss honour protection runs on two separate tracks at once. A set of criminal offences, each with a short complaint window, sits in the StGB, and a separate civil claim under the ZGB and the OR runs on its own timeline alongside it.

This page orients across both tracks and across the three criminal offences themselves, then hands off to the two spoke pages that cover each offence in full depth. It is part of our broader guide to Swiss law.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Swiss law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

Two tracks running on the same statement

Swiss law lets a single defamatory statement trigger two entirely separate proceedings. A criminal complaint under the StGB punishes the person who made the statement. A civil claim under the ZGB and OR can instead, or in addition, seek to have a statement removed or corrected, or seek compensation for the harm it caused.

Neither track controls the other. Filing a Strafantrag does not pause a civil claim, and bringing a civil claim does not close off the criminal route or extend its deadline. A reader defamed online who wants a post taken down quickly, the poster punished, or both, is choosing between these two tracks, not one process with two outcomes.

Which criminal offence actually fits

Three StGB provisions cover honour offences, and each one requires something different from the others. Art. 173 StGB, üble Nachrede, punishes a factual accusation made to a third party about someone's conduct or reputation. Art. 174 StGB, Verleumdung, covers the same conduct where the speaker already knows the accusation is false, a different mental state rather than a heavier version of the same one. Art. 177 StGB, Beschimpfung, is the catch all for an insult or value judgment made by word, writing, image, gesture or a physical act, rather than a factual claim.

The line between a factual accusation and a value judgment decides which article applies, and it also decides whether a truth defence is even available, since only a factual claim can be proven true or false in the first place. Our üble Nachrede and Beschimpfung page and our Verleumdung page each work through their own offence, its penalty and its defences in full, so this page does not repeat that analysis.

One figure is worth flagging here because readers sometimes carry it between the two spoke pages. Art. 173 itself states no penalty figure of its own. The 180 Tagessätze ceiling often quoted for it comes from the general default in Art. 34 Abs. 1 StGB, not from Art. 173's own text, while Art. 177 states its own figure, up to 90 Tagessätze, directly.

The Strafantrag deadline is unforgiving

All three criminal offences are Antragsdelikte, meaning none of them is prosecuted unless the affected person files a Strafantrag with the police or the cantonal Staatsanwaltschaft. Art. 31 StGB gives three months to do so, and that period runs from the day the offender's identity becomes known, not from the day the statement was made.

That detail matters most for anonymous defamation online, where the person behind a post or account can become known well after it first appeared. Missing the three month window ends the criminal route for that specific statement permanently, no matter how serious it was.

A second, separate clock runs under Art. 178 StGB, an absolute four year limit on prosecuting honour offences at all. Clearing the three month window does not help once the four year limit has passed, and the four year limit does not revive a complaint right already lost to the three month window. Both clocks should be treated as already running, not as something to deal with later.

The civil route is its own ground

The civil route sits under Art. 28 ZGB, which gives anyone unlawfully harmed in their personality a claim independent of any criminal case. A statement is unlawful under Art. 28 unless it is justified by the affected person's own consent, an overriding private or public interest, or a specific statute, a test with a similar shape to the public interest question that also runs through Art. 173.

Art. 28a ZGB sets out what a civil claim can actually ask a court for. A court can prohibit a threatened infringement, order removal of an existing one, or declare an infringement unlawful where its disruptive effect continues, and it can order a correction or have its judgment communicated or published to third parties, none of which a criminal complaint achieves on its own.

A related but separate remedy is the Gegendarstellung, the right of reply, under Art. 28g through Art. 28l ZGB. It lets someone directly affected by a factual portrayal in periodically appearing media demand publication of a concise reply, free of charge. It runs on its own short clock: the reply must be sent within 20 days of learning of the item, and never later than three months after publication, whichever comes first.

The right is not unconditional. Art. 28g Abs. 2 ZGB removes it entirely where a medium reported truthfully on public proceedings of an authority and the affected person took part in those proceedings. Art. 28h Abs. 2 ZGB separately allows the medium to refuse a reply that is obviously incorrect, or that breaches the law or public decency.

Money is a separate question again. Art. 41 OR is the general basis for tort liability for unlawfully caused damage, and Art. 49 OR allows a Genugtuung, a payment for non-financial harm, but only where the infringement is unlawful, its severity justifies payment, and the harm has not already been made good another way, for example by a published correction. A successful civil claim does not automatically come with a cash award, and Art. 49 states no fixed amount.

Choosing a route, or using both

A reader deciding what to do is usually weighing three different things: punishing the person who made the statement, getting it removed or corrected, and being compensated for the harm. A criminal complaint under Art. 173, Art. 174 or Art. 177 only reaches the first of these. A civil claim under Art. 28 and Art. 28a ZGB can reach the second, and through Art. 49 OR, potentially the third.

There is no requirement to choose only one. A Strafantrag can be filed with the police or the cantonal Staatsanwaltschaft, and a civil claim can be brought separately over the same statement, and resolving one does not resolve the other. For most readers the immediate practical driver is which deadline sits closest: the three month Strafantrag window, or the much shorter 20 day Gegendarstellung deadline where a reply to published media is still realistically available.

What this cluster covers

Our üble Nachrede and Beschimpfung page works through Art. 173 and Art. 177 in full, including the truth defence, the limit on it, and where the 180 and 90 Tagessätze figures actually come from. Our Verleumdung page works through Art. 174, the knowing falsity element, the aggravated planmässig form, and why no truth defence exists for it at all.

Both spoke pages also cover the Strafantrag procedure for their own offence in more detail than this overview does. This hub sits inside our wider guide to Swiss law, which covers the codes, courts and institutions behind all of it.