For the upcoming federal elections in September, many civil society organisations are publishing statements to engage current and future elected to further human rights causes in Germany. The election demands of the German Organisation Forum Menschenrechte focus on the inviolable dignity of all human beings, which cannot and should not be compromised. Forum Menschenrechte is calling on voters, candidates, parliament, and the federal government to increase efforts to adhere to the political responsibility and defend and protect human rights everywhere. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the discrepancy of bespoken human rights and the access to these have widen even more. “Events of the past months and years have shown us, once again, how vulnerable human dignity and social cohesion are in our society. We were forced to recognise that human rights, which we had thought universally acknowledged long since, are anything but to be taken for granted” Forum Menschenrechte said in their published statement.
The demands of the Forum Menschenrechte:
- The absolute and explicit protection of the inviolable dignity of all human beings
- Sustained funding for civil society engagement and initiatives aimed at strengthening democracy and combatting racism
- The strengthening of the Federal Anti-discrimination Agency and of antidiscrimination laws
- The protection and strengthening of human rights in the digital age
- Action to counter racist violence and prohibit racial profiling
- Protection against violence
- Access to health and sexual and reproductive rights
- Special protections for particularly vulnerable refugees
- Protection of the rights of minor refugees
- The repeal of the provisions toughening asylum and residence laws
- An end to deportations to crisis or war-torn countries
- Access to fair asylum procedures in all EU countries
- Human rights-based development cooperation
- The protection of human rights in the global economy and access to justice for victims of abuses
- Human rights responsibility on the part of international financial institutions
- The establishment and expansion of mechanisms to monitor human rights abuses and to impose sanctions on perpetrators
- The visible interlinkage of human rights protections with crisis prevention, conflict transformation and peace building
- The consistent strengthening and expansion of both international and national instruments for the protection of human rights
As a member of the Forum Menschenrechte, KOK fully supports these demands, these align with our own election petition, which was published in April (German version available here).
