Antidiscrimination

In this analytical piece, Jessica Varela dives into the history of black Germany in their quest for full citizenship from the late nineteenth century until 1921.

In a blow to women across Europe, a crucial law to combat sexualized and digital violence was thwarted by Germany and France. With rape still not uniformly defined, and digital abuses narrowly defined, the fight for women's safety demands a stronger, unified front. Equal rights demand equal security.

In an interview for the Heinrich Böll Foundation Warsaw, Irena Cvetkovic talks strategies of dealing with structural discrimination, human rights situation in the Western Balkans, and creating a new progressive voice of the future.

She still believes that staying in Poland is a chance for them, despite everything. The cake she received from the Foundation's staff was the first one in her life. In November, she celebrated Béla's birthday herself, dressed him in a shirt, forbidding him to wear a hat so he wouldn't mess up his hairstyle. In the hallway of the elementary school, she is a bit embarrassed - she herself has not gone to school too much. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, she didn't think long. She packed up on the second day of the war. Her husband, Vasyl, also packed up, ready to go in the other direction: to join the Ukrainian army. She cried a lot, but she remembers her stay in Przemyśl well. People helped her, and organized activities in which her children participated. They had never been abroad before.  

One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Towards Dialogue Foundation has launched the publication of a series of testimonies by Ukrainian Roma refugee women. Their poignant stories bear witness to the enormously traumatic experience of war.  

Not even ten years after being mentioned for the very first time, feminist foreign policy has made it into the political mainstream: the guidelines ‘Shaping a Feminist Foreign Policy’ of the German Federal Foreign Office outline a strategic shift in German foreign politics. At the same time, digital policy has become more and more international.

The Syrian historian and journalist Karam Nachar is a co-founder of the Al-Jumhuriya newspaper. He writes about women’s and LGBT rights, among other socio-political debates. Interviewed by Hannah El-Hitami, he talks about the specific challenges for minorities in Syria, and the state of Syrian civil society after more than 10 years of war.