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4.2.4.4 Anti-discrimination Offices
According to experts, there is still a weak »culture of anti-discrimination« in many parts of German society. (4) However, since the beginning of the 1990s, a number of anti-discrimination offices have been set up in some cities and regions by NGOs, currently serving also as contact points for victims of hate crimes. This is especially the case in those places that lack any specialized counseling services for such victims.
After the introduction of the General Equal Treatment Act in 2006, these offices, along with other NGOs and research institutions active mainly in anti-racist activities, founded a national umbrella organization in 2007: the Anti-Discrimination Association in Germany (Antidiskriminierungsverband Deutschland, advd). On its website, advd lists member organizations from six cities that provide legal, social and psychological services to victims of discrimination: (5)
• the Equal Treatment Office (GleichBehandlungsBüro, GBB) in Aachen.
the Anti-discrimination Office in Berlin (Anti-Diskriminierungsbüro Berlin e.V., adb) and the Anti-Discrimination Network in Berlin (Antidiskriminierungsnetzwerk Berlin)/Turkish Alliance (Türkischer Bund) in Berlin-Brandenburg
• the Anti-racist Information Center (Anti-Rassismus Informations-Centrum, ARIC-NRW e.V.) in Duisburg
• the Anti-discrimination Office in Cologne, which is a project of the association Public against Violence (Öffentlichkeit gegen Gewalt e.V.)
• the Anti-discrimination Post at the IBIS Intercultural Workplace (Antidiskriminierungsstelle von IBIS Interkulturelle Arbeitstelle) in Oldenburg
• the Anti-discrimination Office in Saxony in Leipzig
According to our research, there are other non-governmental anti-discrimination offices located in Siegen, Dortmund and Stuttgart. The disproportionate geographic distribution of these NGOs—that is, their concentration in the federal states of Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia—reflects neither the extent to which discrimination manifests in the public sphere nor does it reveal anything about the particularly strong commitment made by specific local civil society organizations. In fact, the establishment of independent anti-discrimination offices is closely linked to funding programs by state and local governments.
In North Rhine-Westphalia the devastating and deadly arson attacks in Mölln and Solingen prompted the state government to institute a program in the 1990s that combated racism and discrimination. In 1995 the state minister president declared that more resources should be given to NGOs that provide programs that foster peaceful cooperation between German and migrant communities. Between 1997 and 1999, under the auspices of a regional government coalition of the Green Party and the Social Democrats, 700,000 DM per year was spent for nine pilot projects. Their official task was to counter discrimination of foreigners and members of ethnic minorities by conducting research, developing preventative educational programs and offering counseling services to the affected individuals and communities. Hence, North Rhine-Westphalia was the first federal state in Germany to fund a comparatively high number of non-governmental anti-discrimination offices and bodies, followed by the city state of Berlin.
Table 17: Projects in North Rhine-Westphalia 1997-1999
| Project Organization | City | Main Focus |
| Anti-racist Information Center (Anti-Rassismus Informations-Centrum, ARIC-NRW e.V.) | Duisburg | Coordination and networking of all anti-discrimination activities |
| International Meeting Center — House for Peace (Internationale Begegnungszentrum-Friedenshaus e.V., IBZ) | Bielefeld | Contact point for victims of discrimination; research on discrimination in social services |
| Planerladen — Association for the Promotion of Democratic Town — Planning and Area-Based Community Work (Planerladen e.V. — Verein zur Förderung demokratischer Stadtplanung und stadtteilbezogener Gemeinwesenarbeit) | Dortmund | Research on discrimination in the housing market |
| Educational Center in Aachen (Pädagogisches Zentrum Aachen) | Aachen | Research on discrimination in the local job market |
| Office for Peace (Friedensbüro e.V.) | Detmold | Contact point for victims of discrimination |
| Protestant Welfare Association in Düsseldorf (Diakonie) | Düsseldorf | Neighborhood activities and programs against discrimination |
| Office for Equal Treatment — Against Discrimination (Büro für Gleichbehandlung — Gegen Diskriminierung) | Gelsenkirchen | Contact point for victims of discrimination; research on discrimination in the housing market |
| Association for Social Work and Culture in South Westphalia (Verein für Soziale Arbeit und Kultur Südwestfalen e.V., VAKS) | Siegen | Contact point for victims of discrimination |
By 2008 only four of these pilot projects had survived funding cuts under various regional governments: ARIC in Duisburg, Planerladen in Dortmund, the Educational Center in Aachen, and VAKS in Siegen. In cooperation with the Anti-discrimination Office in Cologne, which has been financially supported by the local government since 2001, they formed the NGO network NRW Against Discrimination (NRW gegen Diskriminierung). The financial situation of these existing offices has remained, for the most part, precarious. For their monitoring and counseling activities, they usually have a maximum of one paid person, and in some anti-discrimination offices, two counselors work only part-time.
The Anti-discrimination Office in Cologne emerged from the anti-racist movement in the 1990s, when about 500 people united in Cologne to counter a wave of violent attacks against refugee shelters and migrant communities in the region. They set up an emergency and counseling hotline in 1995 to help organize support and protection for victims of racist hate crimes and also to mobilize people for protests and demonstrations. In 2001 after an attack on a synagogue in Düsseldorf, the municipality of Cologne decided to issue a local program against racism, which would include funding for anti-discrimination measures. Out of this emergency hotline emerged a more institutionalized form of regular support services called the Public against Violence, an association focused on structural forms of racism (as manifested in certain laws) and the treatment of migrants and ethnic minorities by state institutions, social services and/or employers. The Cologne model is unique in Germany insofar as it has three components: an anti-discrimination office located in the Department for Inter-cultural Contacts at the municipality, an antidiscrimination office linked to one of the larger welfare associations (CARITAS), and one independent anti-discrimination office, the ADB. Since 2003 the ADB has also received some minimal financial support from the regional government of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Anti-discrimination Office in Siegen (VAKS e.V.) is a project of the Association for Social Work and Culture in South Westphalia. Founded in 1987 by a group of social workers and students, it began as a campaign on behalf of a refugee family from Syria that was threatened with deportation. While this campaign was eventually successful, its members realized that there were no institutionalized contact points and counseling services for migrants and refugees in Siegen. The association was first called Help for Foreigners (Ausländerhilfe) and was organized on a volunteer basis. Over the years, the work became more professional, including coordinating One World Initiatives in the region and mentoring refugees on behalf of the municipality. At the end of the 1990s, members of VAKS also became involved in anti-discrimination work, for which it started to receive funding from the regional government. Their most successful project is the Media Library (Mediathek), a service for schools, youth and adult trainers that provides media and educational material in the field of anti-racism.
The Equal Treatment Office in Aachen (GBB) has been working under the auspices of the Educational Center since 1997, when its members decided a project was needed that focused more on discrimination in the field of education and the job market. By that time, the center was mainly active in providing services to families with a bi-national or migrational background and to the unemployed in general. Since then, the GBB has been able to finance two paid part-time employees, a lawyer and a social worker to conduct research and legal counseling in the field of discrimination. GBB has been particularly active in developing education and training programs for other NGOs and institutions with respect to the new national anti-discrimination law introduced in 2006.
All of the anti-discrimination offices interviewed find it difficult to clearly distinguish between incidents of discrimination and reports of other forms of harassment and violence. According to the lawyer of the GBB in Aachen, about half of the clients who have contacted their office have one form of experience or another with discriminatory violence, ranging from aggressive verbal insults and coercion to physical assaults. Most of these attacks, though, do not have an organized rightwing agenda, but rather a clear racist motivation. Our interview partner from VAKS in Siegen reported that approximately half of all consultation cases (about 20 to 30 per year) involve right-wing or racist harassment and attacks. According to its counselor, the ADB deals with roughly 100 cases of discrimination each year and is the only anti-discrimination office in our sample that publishes aggregated data on their consultation cases. Most complaints deal with ethnic or racist discrimination by local government institutions. In contrast, reports on direct physical attacks are quite rare, accounting for approximately ten percent of all their cases. Most of the reported assaults did not have a right-wing agenda, but were carried out by neighbors or simply by racists in public places. In 2007 the ADB dealt with many complaints linked to the violent harassment of German women who had converted to Islam and were wearing headscarves. Another problem often reported in Cologne and Siegen are violent and racist assaults and abuses carried out by the police.
The largest client groups in all cities are refugees, migrants and students, either from African countries, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Romania — some of whom are Jewish. They seldom see clients with a gay or transsexual background. VAKS in Siegen also identified left-wing political activists and young anti-Fascists affected by right-wing violence as another group using their services. Usually, they contact the office by phone to report on violent attacks, but they do not give their names or take any further steps such as legal proceedings. According to our interview partner, many people call the office because they want the VAKS to forward this kind of information to local networks and anti-Fascist groups. Sometimes they just feel the need to have somebody listen.
When asked about the services they can offer to victims of discrimination and hate crimes, the answers differed slightly. The GBB in Aachen sees its main job as identifying litigable incidents and cases of discrimination. Even if criminal proceedings or actions based on civil law are not the only way to deal with the problem, they believe that there is a clear need in Germany for more legal action in the field of discrimination. The GBB accompanies clients to appointments with lawyers and court procedures. They, along with six other anti-discrimination offices in North Rhine-Westphalia, created a regional legal aid foundation called Life without Racism (Leben ohne Rassismus), which was set up in 2007 to help victims of discrimination by providing financial support through legal proceedings. (6) This was an important step to encourage more people to pursue legal action. The GBB considers discrimination in the housing market as another particularly important area where action needs to be taken. They also focus on psycho-social support for victims of discrimination and hate crimes. To this means, the organization employs a therapist offering trauma counseling. The GBB-team also tries to follow media coverage and newspaper reports, and sometimes intervenes in individual cases without being directly contacted.
The representative of VAKS was rather pessimistic with regard to the assistance and services they can offer people looking for help:
»We can not offer very much to the victims we consult. We can arrange legal advice and put them in contact with good lawyers and journalists if they want to make their case public. I wish we could also offer them better services in the field of therapeutic and psycho-social programs and experts, but we do not have much of that in Siegen. What we can offer them is the direct mediation and intervention in certain conflicts, and we were successful sometimes in the past, especially in cases where neighbors were the main problem. We do not have good experiences with mediation in cases where colleagues or supervisors at the workplace were the offenders. The unions are not of much of help in this field either.« (7)
Most consultation cases involve filing official complaints, being it disciplinary complaints, or other forms of appeals or preparing legal actions. Even if the services of the offices have professionalized over the years, much is still done on a learningby-doing basis. All of our interview partners complained about the precarious staff situation, which does not leave them enough time for effective monitoring, public relations and outreach activities. Two of our interviewees stated that they do not advertise their assistance services in public anymore because they are already completely overburdened with existing consultation cases. Two of the offices cannot not find the time for properly registering incidents reported to them.
A database, the ARIC-D-Dok, was developed by the coordinating and networking institution ARIC in Duisburg, The idea behind the database was similar to the one established by the CIVITAS projects: to create, at least for the regional level (North Rhine-Westphalia), a better and more precise overview of cases and incidents of discrimination and hate crimes that can be used for political campaigns and demands. It does not seem to be working very well so far:
»We do not have time and resources for a systematic documentation of our consultation cases. We also lack the resources for going more public with our information. The database developed by ARIC Duisburg is much too complicated and needs improvement.« (8)
There have not been sufficient resources to conduct a more systematic analysis of compiled data, due to the fact that the funding by the regional government also implies that the NGOs must develop training and educational programs for social institutions that have better access to society at large for the dissemination of anti-discriminatory principles, such as schools, welfare organizations and local government authorities. One of our interview partners, however, expressed the hope that, with the local government’s announcement of the transfer of all independent anti-discrimination offices by the end of 2009 into what is known as »Integration Agencies« for migrants, these NGOs will receive steadier funding for their work, creating opportunities for intensified counseling services and monitoring activities. Other organizations were less optimistic.
4. Antidiskriminierungsverband Deutschland, http://www.antidiskriminierung.org.
5. Ibid.
6. The GBB and 6 other anti-discrimination offices make up a network called the Network for Equal Opportunity, against Discrminination of Ethnic Minorities in North Rhine-Westphalia (Netzwerk für Chancengleichheit, gegen Diskriminierung ethnischer Minderheiten in NRW). The network’s website is: http://www.nrwgegendiskriminierung.de/.
7. Interview with VAKS.
8. Ibid.
(OPP)
