Discrimination

In January, journalists exposed racist plans for mass expulsions, framed as “remigration”, drawn up by far-right politicians, business people and other actors.

In March, Germany appointed its first ever federal police commissioner to handle complaints of discrimination and other violations by federal police forces. However, an overall lack of effective independent complaints mechanisms and lack of mandatory identification badges for police at federal and state levels continued to hamper investigations into allegations of abuses.

Racist and anti-migrant rhetoric continued throughout the year, especially after stabbing attacks in the cities of Mannheim and Solingen in May and August, which were allegedly carried out by perpetrators from Afghanistan and Syria respectively.

Such harmful rhetoric influenced legislation. In October, parliament adopted a new “security package” of regulations, which conflated criminality with race, ethnicity and nationality. It disproportionately reduced benefits for asylum seekers and extended biometric surveillance and police checks, without a reasonable suspicion standard, increasing the risk of racial profiling.

Serious concerns were raised by reports of increased antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist hate crimes, as well as hate crimes against LGBTI people and other minoritized groups.

LGBTI people

In April, parliament passed a Self-Determination Act enabling transgender, non-binary and intersex people to obtain legal gender recognition by making a simple declaration at the registry office. Coming into force in November, the new law replaced the Transsexuals’ Act of 1980, which had obliged transgender people to undergo discriminatory psychological assessments and a court procedure to obtain legal gender recognition.

Despite the progress made, rights groups complained that the new law had been influenced by trans-hostile narratives – for example, in a provision allowing private contractors to deny access to single-gender venues at their discretion – and did not focus adequately on the protection of transgender, non-binary and intersex people.

Gender-based violence

In November the Federal Criminal Police Office reported a rise in gender-based crimes against women in 2023. Increases were noted in misogynistic hate crimes (+56.3%), online violence (+25.0%), human trafficking (+6.9%), sexual violence (+6.2%) and domestic violence (+5.6%); 16.5% more women were killed by their partners or ex-partners compared to the preceding year.

Freedom of peaceful assembly

On 21 May the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Neuruppin brought charges under section 129 of the Criminal Code against five members of the Last Generation climate campaign group, accusing them of “forming a criminal organization”. This further criminalized the climate movement.

Reports surfaced throughout the year concerning excessive use of force – including pain compliance holds – in the policing of peaceful protests by climate activists and supporters of Palestinians’ rights. In September, during a peaceful Palestinian solidarity protest, a young man was knocked unconscious by police. Civil society organizations expressed concern at the role of racism, including anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism, in the authorities’ response to Palestinian solidarity protests.

On 12 April, Berlin police banned and then dissolved the so-called “Palestine Congress” shortly after it had begun. Several invited speakers were banned from entering the country or from taking part in public activities.

On 26 April, in Berlin’s government district, police banned a protest camp against arms transfers to Israel, citing “danger to public security” without sufficient reason, and then reportedly used excessive force to disperse it.

Freedom of expression

Authorities continued their attempts to criminalize the slogan “from the river to the sea”, which was banned in 2023 because it was deemed “a symbol of Hamas”. In June, a Berlin District Court convicted an activist under section 140 of the Criminal Code for having used the slogan during a protest in October 2023. In November, the Berlin Regional Court convicted a woman under section 86 of the Criminal Code for having posted the slogan on social media, thereby stipulating that the slogan “constitutes the use of a sign of a terrorist organization”.

In May the Federal Ministry of Education started an internal assessment as to whether academics could be denied state funding for publicly opposing the forcible eviction of students protesting in solidarity with Palestinians at Freie University.

On 7 November, parliament adopted a resolution which established that the working definition on antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) should be used by all legislators to address any perceived deficits with regard to tackling antisemitism. The definition would form a benchmark against which various laws, such as criminal and asylum laws, should be reviewed and state funding allocated.

Civil society groups and prominent legal scholars found the IHRA definition to be incompatible with international standards on freedom of expression. The resolution thus created legal uncertainty and raised fears of violations of freedom of expression, academic freedom and artistic freedom.

Refugees’ and migrants’ rights

In January, parliament passed the Repatriation Improvement Act, which expanded authorities’ powers of entry to premises, search and detention, and further increased the risk of unlawful detention for asylum seekers in Germany.

In June the government announced plans to resume deportations to Afghanistan and Syria. In August, Germany deported 28 individuals to Afghanistan, violating the principle of non-refoulement.

Schengen border controls were implemented from 16 September without a requirement for reasonable suspicion as grounds for police checks, thereby heightening the risk of racial profiling and the denial of access to asylum and automatic detention.

In October, as part of its “security package” legislation, parliament introduced new regulations excluding from benefits those asylum seekers whose applications were being processed in another EU member state under the Dublin III Regulation. These individuals were granted only two weeks of interim assistance, with exceptions only in rare cases.

The humanitarian admission programme for Afghanistan – designed in October 2022 to admit 1,000 individuals per month – was ended prematurely by the government. A total of only 1,093 nationals had been transferred to Germany by the end of 2024. Around 2,000 Afghans admitted to the programme remained in Afghanistan or Pakistan awaiting transfer to Germany.

On 9 December, the German asylum authority suspended asylum applications for Syrians, plunging nearly 50,000 Syrian asylum seekers into more precarious circumstances. These included mandatory residence in reception centres, work prohibitions, limited access to healthcare services and a ban on applying for family reunification.

Right to privacy

Revelations from a parliamentary inquiry and a series of reports by investigative journalists revealed that police had used facial recognition technology in at least six federal states without sufficient legal basis to do so.

Sexual and reproductive rights

In April an expert government-appointed commission on “reproductive self-determination and reproductive medicine” presented proposals to decriminalize and regulate abortion. In April, the preliminary findings of a multi-year research project on “experiences and life situations of unintentionally pregnant women” underlined the need to bring regulations in line with international human rights standards and the WHO guidelines on safe abortion care. In December, parliamentarians introduced a draft law to partially legalize abortions, but at year’s end abortion remained criminalized.

In November a law came into force to protect pregnant people from harassment outside abortion clinics and mandatory counselling centres. The law prohibited actions such as deliberate obstruction of access to facilities, pressurizing a pregnant person, or confronting them with untrue or disturbing material.

Right to a healthy environment

On 16 May the Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court ruled that the federal government was in breach of the Climate Protection Act because its climate protection plans in various sectors were deemed insufficient to meet legally binding emission reduction targets stipulated by the law.

On 17 July an amended Climate Protection Act entered into force, eliminating the basis of the court’s ruling. Overall emission reduction targets remained unchanged. However, the amended act removed binding reduction targets for individual sectors, as well as the requirement to present emergency measures if such targets were missed.

Irresponsible arms transfers

In June, UN Special Experts called on states to end all transfers of military equipment to Israel to avoid the risk of responsibility for human rights violations. While the number of licences granted for such transfers from Germany to Israel reduced, some continued. Germany also licensed transfers to Saudi Arabia of arms and military equipment, despite a lack of accountability for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in relation to the Yemen conflict.