On 23 February 2021, in its new report published together with the government’s comments, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) called on Norwegian child welfare services to further strengthen their assistance to struggling families with a migration or minority background in order to avoid the severe measures of placing children in foster care, limiting or even cutting contact between children and their biological parents and adoption without their consent.

ECRI also called for more resources for supporting victims of discrimination, that irregular migrants should be given access to all necessary health care, and that Parliament and the government should adopt rules to forbid the use of hate speech by their members.

In recent years, the police have recorded an almost six-fold increase in hate speech offences, many of which targeted Muslims and some of which may have led to hate crimes. In 2019, 250 cases of violent hate crime were recorded, including a racially motivated perpetrator murdering his Chinese-born stepsister and subsequently attacking and attempting to kill worshippers in a Mosque near Oslo. ECRI recommended that the Norwegian authorities continue focusing on preventing and detecting radicalisation and implement measures to systematically detect and remove illegal racist and extremist online content. They should also enact laws to disband racist organisations, including political parties.