A United Nations panel on discrimination is to present a report on racial profiling and racism in Germany to the UN Human Rights Council in September.
This follows a visit to Germany by the expert panel, which included a South African, who found that despite strong denials from the German authorities people of African descent in the country were suffering racial discrimination.
“People of African descent in Germany suffer racial discrimination, Afrophobia and racial profiling in their daily lives, but their situation remains largely invisible to the wider society,” a UN expert panel said on Monday at the end of its first official visit to the country.
“The repeated denial that racial profiling does not exist in Germany by police authorities and the lack of an independent complaint mechanism at federal and state level fosters impunity,” said Ricardo Sunga, who heads the expert panel, in a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Established on April 25, 2002 by the then Commission on Human Rights, following the World Conference against Racism held in Durban in 2001, the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent is composed of five independent experts: Sunga (Philippines), current chair-rapporteur; Michal Balcerzak (Poland); Mireille Fanon Mendes-France (France); Sabelo Gumedze (South Africa); and Ahmed Reid (Jamaica).
A working group delegation visited Berlin, Dessau, Dresden, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Hamburg from February 20 to 27 to gain first-hand knowledge on discriminatory practices affecting people of African descent in Germany.
“There is a serious lack of ethnicity-based disaggregated data, and an incomplete understanding of history, which obscure the magnitude of structural and institutional racism people of African descent face,” Sunga said.
Sunga explained that the working group believes that institutional racism and racist stereotyping by the criminal justice system has led to a failure to effectively investigate and prosecute perpetrators of racist violence, racial profiling and hate crimes against people of African descent.
During the eight-day mission the human rights experts engaged with representatives of the German Federal and State authorities, representatives of national and provincial human rights institutions and civil society.
However, the delegation welcomed ongoing efforts by the administration to address racial discrimination faced by people of African descent.