Economic, social and cultural rights
Women and people with disabilities faced significant barriers in accessing social assistance benefits, including stigmatization, bureaucratic hurdles and restrictive legal provisions, which undermined their right to social security.1 During the parliamentary election campaigns, the Austrian People’s Party as well as the Austrian Freedom Party advocated restricting access to social assistance benefits for asylum seekers and non-nationals.
In September the Ministry of Social Affairs adopted the Housing First approach as an Austrian-wide model to support people experiencing homelessness. Despite this positive development, the government failed to adopt a comprehensive national housing strategy.
Women’s and girls’ rights
By year’s end 27 women had been killed in cases of suspected femicides, amid concerns about a failure to adopt long-term strategies to prevent such violence. In September the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO) called on Austria, among other things, to ensure that places in women’s shelters were available in sufficient quantity and in an adequate geographic distribution.
Women continued to have limited access to safe and affordable abortion care in several federal states. Stigmatization of health personnel providing abortion care remained a further barrier to women accessing safe abortion services.2 Civil society continued to urge the government to fully decriminalize abortion.
Freedom of peaceful assembly
Peaceful acts of civil disobedience were met with prison terms without due process and negative rhetoric was used against climate activists. In May, protests by Palestinian solidarity movements at the University of Vienna and the Technical University were dispersed by the police.
Freedom of expression
In January, parliament passed the Freedom of Information Act, although most municipalities were exempted from the duty to proactively publish information of general interest.
In August, the government published a draft law on surveillance of encrypted communications which would allow the use of highly invasive spyware.
Detainees’ rights
In June the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) expressed concerns over conditions in some detention deportation centres and called on Austria to end the practice of detaining individuals with mental health issues in so-called security cells in such facilities.
Refugees’ and migrants’ rights
In June the UN CAT expressed concerns about the lack of any federal provision to ensure guardianship for all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children on their arrival in the country. A legislative proposal by the Ministry of Justice to address this was not forwarded to parliament for discussion.
Also in June the Constitutional Court upheld a decision to send a man back to Afghanistan, despite concerns that he faced a real risk of serious human rights violations.
In October the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that an Afghan woman’s gender and nationality alone could suffice as proof of persecution, following Austria’s denial of refugee status to two Afghan women.
There were no safe and dignified pathways like resettlement programmes for people seeking international protection.
Discrimination
Austria failed to harmonize anti-discrimination legislation across national and regional levels. Disability, ethnicity and gender continued to be considered protected grounds only in access to goods and services.
Concerns persisted throughout the year about rates of antisemitic and anti-Muslim crimes.
In the run up to parliamentary elections in September, there was a notable increase in racist speech, including by public officials, particularly online targeting of asylum seekers and refugees.
Unlawful use of force
In January, the new police oversight body became operational although concerns over its full independence persisted. Police were still not required to wear identification badges, impeding accountability.
Right to a healthy environment
Human-induced climate change increased extreme weather events, with floods, storms, and mountain snowfall in September. The government failed to introduce a binding climate protection act.
