News of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI)

Back Norway should avoid severe measures in childcare cases involving families with a migrant or minority background and improve the situation of transgender and intersex persons

Memorial for the victims of the July 22nd, 2011 terrorist attacks on the island of Utøya and in Oslo

In its new report published today together with the government’s comments, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) calls 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 recommends that the Norwegian authorities develop a new action plan on LGBTI persons with a special focus on transgender and intersex persons, awareness-raising among the general population about their situation, training of health nurses in schools and the introduction of the grounds of gender identity and sex characteristics in the anti-discrimination, hate speech and hate crime legislation.

These are the two recommendations that the Norwegian authorities should implement as a priority and will be the subject of an interim follow-up by ECRI within two years.

On other areas, ECRI welcomes progress made in a number of fields since the previous report in 2014, such as the duty of all authorities and employers to promote equality and prevent discrimination, and to document the action taken. Further, ECRI welcomes the entry into force of Act no. 46 on the change of gender, which relies on the principle of self-determination of transgender persons. The police have improved their hate crime statistics. A specialised police unit was set up and thousands of police officers were trained to better combat hate crimes. In addition, political leaders signed a declaration and developed a strategy against hate speech.

However, ECRI points out some issues of concern and calls for more resources for supporting victims of discrimination. It also underlines 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 recommends 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.