This article is part of a series on the |
Politics of Germany |
---|
![]() |
Human rights in Germany enjoy a high level of protection, both in theory and in practice, and are enshrined in the Grundgesetz . The country has ratified most international human rights treaties. Reports from independent organizations such as Amnesty International certify a high level of compliance with human rights, while others, like the researcher Tobias Singelnstein, point out several issues, in particular police brutality [1] and mistreatment of refugees. The 2008 Freedom in the World report by US-funded Freedom House gives Germany a score of "1" (the best possible) for both political rights and civil liberties.
The constitution of Germany, the Grundgesetz , which came into effect on May 23, 1949, puts a particular emphasis on human rights. Its first sentence, "Human dignity is inviolable", is being interpreted as protecting the sum of human rights. This paragraph is protected by an "eternity clause" and cannot be changed. It has wide-ranging effects on judicial practice; for example, it has been used to justify the right on Informational self-determination in a 1983 finding of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.
However, following experiences from the Weimar Republic, Germany sees itself as a wehrhafte Demokratie (fortified democracy); actions targeted towards removing the democratic order are not covered by human rights.
The constitution guarantees all rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which itself is not legally binding), with the exception of an unlimited right for asylum.
The ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights allows citizens to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Mandatory military service for male citizens was established in 1956. [2] At any time, conscientious objectors can opt to do Zivildienst (civilian service) instead. For the time of both services, many human rights such as freedom of movement are suspended. Since 1 July 2011, the government no longer has the ability to exercise the right under this article, that is, military service is currently de facto voluntary in Germany. However, there are no plans to abolish laws allowing conscription. [3]
Germany is also a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. It recognizes the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The Amnesty International reports of 2005 and 2006 mainly criticize—though very rarely occurring and mostly severely punished—some cases of police brutality, mistreatment of refugees, and racist attacks.
The 2008 Freedom in the World report by US-funded Freedom House gives Germany a score of "1" (the best possible) for both political rights and civil liberties.
Remand must be ordered by a judge. Usually, a suspect cannot be detained for more than six months without a conviction.
The death penalty is abolished. A court may order that a person be detained indefinitely even after the sentence is completed, if the person is convicted of particularly serious crimes and is judged, after expert testimony, to be a danger to the public (Sicherungsverwahrung).
The German citizen Khalid El-Masri was abducted by the CIA in 2005 and interned without trial for months, although innocent. German intelligence was informed early about this, but undertook nothing, which was subject to an intense political debate.
Freedom of speech is guaranteed by the constitution. However, Volksverhetzung (incitement of the people) is a crime, defined as spreading hate against or insult against a part of the population. In 1994, a paragraph explicitly forbidding denial of Nazi crimes was added.
Open-air public rallies require (generally) prior announcement to the local authorities, but no permits. Local authorities can prohibit rallies only on grounds of public safety concerns or involvement of outlawed organizations.
Freedom of press is generally very established in Germany; the 2009 Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders rates Germany at place 18 of 175 countries.
The most notable incident involving free press restrictions was the Spiegel scandal of 1962, when the Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauß ordered the unlawful arrest of several journalists after an article accusing him of bribery. The scandal led to the dismissial of Strauß from office and severely damaged the reputation of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
In 2005, minister of the interior Otto Schily authorized a raid of offices of the periodical Cicero, which was criticized as an attack on press freedom by part of the German press. The raid was based on a substantiated suspicion of leaking of state secrets. However, on February 27, 2007, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that suspicion that a journalist is aiding the betrayal of state secrets is not sufficient to warrant a search, and thus the raid was illegal. The finding has been widely regarded as a strengthening of press freedom. [6]
A scandal regarding spying on journalists by the secret service Bundesnachrichtendienst , starting in May 2006, has not been cleared up yet.
Especially because of experiences through the Nazi-regime, the German politics and people are very attentive to the power and way of working of the police. In Germany the use of firearms—even by the police—is strictly regulated and there are (compared with other countries) only a few cases of shots fired by the police every year. [7] However, there were some incidents in the last past years:
On 5 March 2009 a man died in a hospital after falling into a coma while in police custody in Hagen on 17 February where he had been bound face-down. The Office of the Public Prosecutor terminated its investigations and found that the force used by the police was proportionate, despite the fact that since 2000, police officers have been trained not to restrain a person face-down because of the danger of asphyxia. [8]
In December 2008, the regional court of Dessau acquitted two police officers of killing Oury Jalloh as a result of negligence. [9] Oury Jalloh had died 2005 when a fire broke out in his cell, where he was restrained to the bed. In its oral reasons for the judgment, the court stated lack of evidence as the reason for the acquittal, and strongly criticized the testimonies of most of the police officers who were witnesses in the court case. On 13 December 2012, the regional court of Magdeburg overruled the earlier acquittal, and ruled for negligent homicide. An earlier accusation of bodily harm with fatal consequences was dropped by the public prosecution for lack of evidence. The accused officer was condemned to a fine of 10,800 Euro by the court, in excess of the 6,300 Euro plead for by prosecution. [10]
There are no reports on systematic use of torture in Germany. However, there were some related incidents.
In 2002, Frankfurt's police vice president Wolfgang Daschner ordered a subordinate officer to threaten the suspect of a kidnapping to use force in order to get information on the whereabouts of the abductee (the abductee was killed shortly after the kidnapping, but the suspect told the police that the child was still alive, and Daschner decided to break the law to save the child's life. Daschner himself wrote down an official note of his actions). This triggered an emotional debate over the legality of such measures. Daschner was convicted to the lowest possible penalty of a fine. Daschner and the subordinate officer remained in duty.
In a trial against terror suspect Mounir El Motassadeq, a court used evidence provided by US authorities, despite widespread evidence of torture in US detainment camps.[ citation needed ] The conviction was rejected in appeal due to lack of evidence. In January 2007 he was condemned for 15 years in detention.[ citation needed ]
Forced psychiatric interventions have repeatedly been reported by Psychiatric Survivor activists to be inhumane, meeting the criteria of and being experienced as torture. [11] In 2011 and 2012, the German Federal Constitutional Court [12] and the Federal Court of Justice clarified that there has never been any sufficient legal basis for compulsory treatment as practiced until then. Under the protests of human rights activists [13] [14] who were supported by sociologist Prof. Wolf-Dieter Narr, the German Government and successively also the federal state governments started working towards a quick legalization of involuntary treatment. [15] [16] By the time the first of these laws were enacted, the Special Rapporteur on torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Juan E. Méndez, reported on abusive practises in health care settings worldwide and the policies that promote these practises. He stated that:
"both this mandate and United Nations treaty bodies have established that involuntary treatment and other psychiatric interventions in health-care facilities are forms of torture and ill-treatment" and that "it is essential that an absolute ban on all coercive and non-consensual measures, including restraint and solitary confinement of people with psychological or intellectual disabilities, should apply" [17]
Several parties, such as the right-wing "National Democratic Party of Germany" (NPD) and the communist platform of the Left Party, are under surveillance from the Verfassungsschutz ("Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"). The use of police informers has sometimes[ who? ] been criticized as excessive[ citation needed ]. A motion to label the NPD as an illegal organization was abandoned, because it became apparent that many actions of the NPD were actually controlled by the Verfassungsschutz. [18] In addition to parties, the German Government placed the Church of Scientology and its members in Germany under surveillance by the Verfassungsschutz since 1997 for the alleged goal of abolishing the order based on the German Grundgesetz. See also: Scientology in Germany.
Ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the political process and in public life, especially the civil service. [19] There were some cases of attacks on minorities in the country by right-wing groups, although Germany is—especially because of its past—very considerate on tolerance and integration. [20] In 2010 the US State Department reported that "right-wing extremist violence and harassment of racial minorities and foreigners were problems”. [21]
There has been a growing awareness of human trafficking as a human rights issue in Europe (see main article: trafficking in human beings ). The end of communism and collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia has contributed to an increase in human trafficking, with the majority of victims being women forced into prostitution. [22] [23] Germany is a transit and destination country for persons, primarily women, trafficked mainly from Central and Eastern Europe and from Africa for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Russia alone accounted for one-quarter of the 1,235 identified victims reported in 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. For the first time, Germany's statistics included German nationals who numbered 127. [24] [25]
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in Germany have evolved significantly over the course of the last decades. As of June 29, 2017, Germany legalized same-sex marriage, which provides the same rights as opposite-sex married couples receive. Same-sex step adoption has also been legal since 2005 and was expanded in 2013 to allow someone in a same-sex relationship to adopt a child already adopted by their partner; [26] however, joint adoption has not yet been legislated. Discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity vary across Germany, but discrimination in employment and the provision of goods and services is in principle banned countrywide. Transgender people have been allowed to change their legal gender since 1980. The law initially required them to undergo surgical alteration of their genitals in order to have key identity documents changed. This has since been declared unconstitutional. [27]
Intersex people in Germany have no recognition of their rights to physical integrity and bodily autonomy, and no specific protections from discrimination on the basis of sex characteristics. In response to an inquiry by the German Ethics Council in 2012, the government passed legislation in 2013 designed to classify some intersex infants to a de facto third category. The legislation has been criticized by civil society and human rights organizations as misguided. [28] [29]
Research published in 2016 found no substantive reduction in numbers of intersex medical interventions on infants and children with intersex conditions in the period from 2005 to 2014. [30] The United Nations and Amnesty International have joined local intersex civil society organizations in calling for protections. [31]
The human rights situation in Cambodia is facing growing criticisms both within the country and from an increasingly alarmed international community. After a series of flagrant violations against basic human rights a feeling of incertitude regarding the direction the country is emerging, sometimes comparing the situation to a newborn Burma.
Freedom of religion in Germany is guaranteed by article 4 of the German constitution. This states that "the freedom of religion, conscience and the freedom of confessing one's religious or philosophical beliefs are inviolable. Uninfringed religious practice is guaranteed." In addition, article 3 states that "No one may be prejudiced or favored because of his gender, his descent, his race, his language, his homeland and place of origin, his faith or his religious or political views." Any person or organization can call the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany for free help.
Human rights in Thailand have long been a contentious issue. The country was among the first to sign the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and seemed committed to upholding its stipulations; in practice, however, those in power have often abused the human rights of the Thai nation with impunity. From 1977 to 1988, Amnesty International (AI) reported that there were whitewashed cases of more than one thousand alleged arbitrary detentions, fifty forced disappearances, and at least one hundred instances of torture and extrajudicial killings. In the years since then, AI demonstrated that little had changed, and Thailand's overall human rights record remained problematic. A 2019 HRW report expanded on AI's overview as it focuses specifically on the case of Thailand, as the newly government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha assumes power in mid-2019, Thailand's human rights record shows no signs of change.
Human rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.
Human rights in Greece are observed by various organizations. The country is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The Greek constitution also guarantees fundamental human rights to all Greek citizens.
Current issues concerning human rights in Albania include domestic violence, isolated cases of torture, and police brutality, the general condition of prisons, human and sex trafficking and LGBT rights.
Human rights in Jordan are similar to or better than those elsewhere in the Middle East. Human Rights Watch reported in January 2018 that although recently there have been far-reaching reforms of the laws and regulations in the country, abuses against basic rights such as freedom of expression persisted.
In law, sex characteristic refers to an attribute defined for the purposes of protecting individuals from discrimination due to their sexual features. The attribute of sex characteristics was first defined in national law in Malta in 2015. The legal term has since been adopted by United Nations, European, and Asia-Pacific institutions, and in a 2017 update to the Yogyakarta Principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.
Human rights in Ukraine concern the fundamental rights of every person in Ukraine. Between 2017 and 2022, Freedom House has given Ukraine ratings from 60 to 62 on its 100-point scale, and a "partly free" overall rating. Ratings on electoral processes have generally been good, but there are problems with corruption and due process. Its rating later declined in 2023 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led to the enactment of martial law in Ukraine, as well as a labor code that removed many legal protection for employees and small and medium-sized companies, as well as a law that that increased the government's power to regulate media companies and journalism. Since the beginning of the invasion Russia has engaged in various war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and the invasion has had a major humanitarian impact on Ukraine and its citizens.
Human rights are codified in the Dutch constitution. Together with other European states, the Netherlands is often at or near the head in international civil liberties and political rights rankings. Per year there are about 6,000 victims of and 100 convictions for human trafficking. Despite this, the Netherlands is considered to have one of the best human rights records in the world.
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals, that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies."
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". "Because their bodies are seen as different, intersex children and adults are often stigmatized and subjected to multiple human rights violations".
The following is a timeline of intersex history.
Intersex people in Germany have legal recognition of their rights to physical integrity and bodily autonomy, with exceptions, but no specific protections from discrimination on the basis of sex characteristics. In response to an inquiry by the German Ethics Council in 2012, the government passed legislation in 2013 designed to classify some intersex infants as a de facto third category. The legislation has been criticized by civil society and human rights organizations as misguided.
Transgender rights in the Federal Republic of Germany are regulated by the Transsexuellengesetz since 1980, and indirectly affected by other laws like the Abstammungsrecht. The law initially required transgender people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery in order to have key identity documents changed. This has since been declared unconstitutional. The German government has pledged to replace the Transsexuellengesetz with the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz, which would remove the financial and bureaucratic hurdles necessary for legal gender and name changes. Discrimination protections on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation vary across Germany, but discrimination in employment and the provision of goods and services is in principle banned countrywide.
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". Such variations may involve genital ambiguity, and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female.
Human rights in the Dominican Republic constitute the civil and political rights and freedoms legally protected under the Constitution of the Dominican Republic and enforced by the government through common and statutory law. The majority of human rights disputes are presided over by the highest court of constitutional appeal, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal. These rights and freedoms have developed over time in accordance with the Dominican Republic's expansion from the former Spanish colony of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to its modern state formation. The history of human rights in the state have also been marked by the oscillation between democratic administrations, such as the current presidency of Danilo Medina, and authoritarian administrations, most significantly the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo between 16 August 1930 and 16 August 1938. As a member of the Organization of American States and the United Nations, the Dominican Republic is party to myriad legal treaties and covenants which propagate the human rights standards of the international community and have integrated the majority of these human rights directives into their domestic legislation.
Portugal is generally considered as successful in upholding the civil liberties and protecting the human rights of its citizens. Portugal has proved to be determined in promoting and respecting human rights at an international and national level. The country's minister of Justice as of September 2018, Francisca Van Dunem, said that Portugal has had "a good track record" on human rights but violations still do persist.
Human rights in Slovakia are governed by the laws of Slovakia and overseen by international organizations such as the Council of Europe.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}
: Missing or empty |url=
(help){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite book}}
: |website=
ignored (help)