A general election in Germany is expected in February 2025. In December 2024, Human Rights Watch wrote to political parties in Germany sharing an election briefing that sets out key priorities and recommendations on human rights for the next parliament.
Many voters in Germany and many governments around the world are looking to Germany to protect and uphold human rights even in the current challenging domestic and international contexts. As German political parties prepare their platforms for the upcoming federal election Human Rights Watch has compiled recommendations on key human rights issues in Germany and around the world.
Foreign Policy, Crisis and Conflict
Mobilize fully all domestic and international mechanisms for accountability and justice for serious crimes committed in Ukraine and support Ukraine’s democracy in wartime
Germany should continue support for impartial, independent accountability for the litany of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. German judicial authorities should investigate serious crimes committed in Ukraine, continue their investigations into serious crimes committed in Ukraine, including under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Germany should also support civil society organizations’ efforts to represent victims in cases pursued through German courts.
Germany should ensure that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has adequate resources to address all cases under its purview and use its diplomatic weight to press ICC state parties to enforce its arrest warrants, including the arrest warrant issued in March 2023 for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Germany should also work inside the EU Council to guarantee that all EU member states comply with EU guidelines on avoiding non-essential contacts with ICC fugitives. In supporting Ukraine’s EU accession, Germany has an important role to play in making sure Ukrainian authorities uphold the rule of law and human rights principles during wartime.
Uphold international law on Israel-Palestine
The German government has rightly condemned the crimes committed during and since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas-led groups, but has consistently refused to denounce serious human rights and international humanitarian law violations by Israeli authorities in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, including war crimesand crimes against humanity. This has led to growing accusations of double standards and undermined Germany’s and the EU’s credibility as principled foreign policy actors.
Germany should commit to comply with international rulings on Israel and Palestine, push the EU to ban trade with Israel’s illegal settlements, and suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. It should adopt targeted sanctions against officials responsible for serious abuses, halt arms transfers to Israel, execute ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials and Hamas leaders, and support other efforts toward accountability.
Speak up forcefully on human rights violations in China
Germany should speak up forcefully against the Chinese government’s violations in and outside the country, including severe repression of free speech and free expression. It should address the crimes against humanity in Xinjiang including arbitrary detention and state-imposed forced labor of Uyghurs and other Muslims; religious and cultural repression in Xinjiang and Tibet; the systematic dismantling of democracy in Hong Kong and acts of transnational repression.
Germany should lead and support bold actions by the EU and the UN to press the Chinese government to address serious violations committed by the authorities. In particular, Germany should lead initiatives to require China to follow up on the recommendations made by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in its 2022 report on Xinjiang, which documented serious human rights violations that “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
Within the EU, Germany should push for Xinjiang to be qualified as a region at high-risk of state-imposed forced labor in the database to be set up under the upcoming EU Forced Labor Regulation.
Counter authoritarianism and support human rights defenders
Germany should use its political weight to advance accountability for crimes committed by the authorities in Russia and Belarus, both abroad and inside their own countries. It should do so through support for Russian and Belarusian human rights defenders, activists, and civil society, in-country and in exile, including by securing prison releases; advancing universal jurisdiction work on Belarus; and actively supporting UN accountability instruments.
Germany has the influence and resources, including through the EU, to pursue a principled foreign policy toward rising authoritarianism in Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Central Asian states. It should do so by calling on authorities to release those imprisoned on political grounds; insisting on the implementation of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, and supporting implementation by playing a bolder role at the Council of Europe over non-compliance. It should counter the spread of “foreign agent” style laws and provide flexible democracy support to civil society and media.
Bilateral relations and deals with third countries, including India, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others, should never be a reason to ignore appalling human rights records by these governments. Selectivity can only undermine Germany’s credibility on the world stage. Germany should tie its future partnerships, and those of the EU to genuine reforms and human rights progress, and actively support civil society and human rights defenders under threat.
Create a National Coordination Office to tackle transnational repression
Many authoritarian governments seek to control and silence their citizens living abroad. This is known as transnational repression (TNR). People from other countries living in Germany experience this pressure, Human Rights Watch has found but authorities are poorly equipped to stop it and protect those targeted. A national coordination office would improve responses by the Foreign, Interior and Migration ministries, the police and other bodies, and ensure better documentation of cases, effective monitoring, prosecution of perpetrators, pressure on states engaged in TNR and support for victims.
Boost Germany’s leadership in response to crisis and conflicts
Civilians bear the brunt of conflicts in Sudan, Sahel, Myanmar, and elsewhere. Germany should strengthen its leadership, bilaterally, at the EU and the UN, to end violations of international humanitarian law, sanction those responsible and support international courts, other credible accountability mechanisms, and the use of universal jurisdiction to end impunity.
Germany should commit to review arms transfers when there is a likelihood that they would be used to perpetrate abuses, with a view to suspending or conditioning them. Germany should oppose returning asylum seekers to countries where they are not safe, such as Syria or Afghanistan. Germany should insist on a rights-respecting conflict resolution between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ensuring that the rights of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh are not deprioritized in peace talks and border delimitation discussions.
Asylum and Migration in Europe
Pursue domestically, and support at EU-level, a rights-respecting implementation of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum to ensure the right to seek asylum and fair and efficient processes
The Pact reaffirms the fundamental right to seek asylum in the EU while it also introduces concepts and measures that risk undermining this right. These risks include widespread detention at borders, lowered asylum standards, and an abuse of ‘crisis’ or ‘instrumentalization’ measures. Germany should champion implementation in a way that avoids those risks and upholds human rights and refugee law. It should also promote proposals to enable effective monitoring and accountability for rights violations and pushbacks at European borders, including by expanding the scope and independence of the monitoring mechanisms foreseen in the Pact and strengthening accountability for violations and sanctions for non-compliance.
Promote and support adequate search and rescue (SAR) capacity in the Mediterranean Sea, safe and timely disembarkation at the closest port of safety, and an enabling environment for nongovernmental humanitarian groups performing SAR
Germany should push for adequate EU SAR capacity, including via Frontex aerial surveillance, stand firm in its defense of civil society organizations performing SAR, and insist that cooperation with third countries is limited to interventions essential to prevent imminent loss of life and conditional on guarantees that their intervention would not result in disembarkation in an unsafe port.
Germany should use its role on the Frontex management board and within the EU to encourage Frontex to systematically inform nongovernmental rescue ships at sea of migrant boats in distress and regularly issue emergency alerts to mobilize all nearby vessels and prevent the loss of life.
Uphold EU and international law obligations on access to territorial asylum in the EU and ensure that collaboration with third countries on migration and asylum is conditional on respect for the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees
Germany should reject proposals to move offshore and externalize asylum processing as unlawful and impractical and oppose proposals for any revisions or watering down of the criteria for safety under the ‘safe third country’ concept in the Asylum Procedures Regulation in respect of the principle of non-refoulement.
The EU’s strategy of containment to prevent the arrival of refugees and migrants relies on partnership agreements with third countries that pay little to no attention to their human rights records. Germany should ensure that no migration cooperation funding reaches entities involved in migrant rights violations in third countries.
It should press for human rights impact assessments in advance of collaboration with or support to third countries on asylum and migration, as well as independent human rights monitoring that could inform the suspension of funding when human rights are violated, and support strengthened parliamentary oversight. Germany should ensure that migration partnerships never lead it or the EU to overlook violations of other fundamental rights in the countries involved in the partnerships.
Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights in Europe
With the group of friends of rule of law in the EU Council work to build a sufficient majority to hold a four-fifths vote in 2025 to determine the existence of a clear risk of a breach of EU treaty values in Hungary
Hungary’s government has persistently undermined democratic institutions in the country in ways that violate human rights and threaten EU values. Courts are captured. Media pluralism is declining. Civil society is under threat. The new Defense of Sovereignty law – subject of an ongoing infringement procedure by the European Commission – is used to harass civil society and independent media. The government has ruled by emergency decree for the past four years. While infringement and financial conditionality procedures remain important, the article 7.1 TEU procedure, launched six years ago on Hungary, is the only tool to address systemic attacks against EU treaty values and political action on it continues to rest in the hands of the Council.
Protect civil society space including the right to protest in Germany and across the EU
Civil society plays a crucial role in holding governments accountable and driving positive change. Germanyrestricts activism, through curbs on freedom of expression and assembly at pro-Palestine and climate protests, and brings criminal charges against peaceful climate activists. Germany should instead act to uphold these democratic rights, protecting and facilitating space for peaceful protest and dissent.
It should also demonstrate leadership in protecting civic space within the EU, including by encouraging EU institutions to defend these rights in other member states and opposing EU-level initiatives such as the proposed directive on transparency of interest representation on behalf of third countries that risks stigmatizing foreign-funded civil society groups.
Show Leadership on EU action to uphold media freedom including action against SLAPPs
Media freedom is under threat in the EU, including in Hungary and Greece, and globally. The use of SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation – is a particular threat in the EU. Germany’s leadership on this issue is vital. A free and independent media is the cornerstone of a healthy democracy, enabling the free flow of information, accountability for those in power, and a platform for diverse voices. As a leading EU member, Germany should champion these principles, advocating within the EU for stronger protections for media freedom and pluralism across all member states, including from SLAPPs.
Take concrete action to tackle root causes of discrimination and hate violence and systematically collect disaggregated equality data to ensure effective policy responses
Germany has a serious problem with racism, antisemitism and xenophobia against migrants—manifested in violence and embedded in state systems. The response of the authorities to these connected problems has been limited, and in some cases counterproductive. This includes an excessive focus on curbing criticism of Israel and blaming migrants for antisemitism while downplaying home-grown hatred against Jews and neglecting the education and intercultural dialogue needed to tackle it. Anti-Muslim hate has been largely ignored. Germany is also failing to collect systematically disaggregated data it needs to understand structural discrimination and root causes and frame effective policy responses to them.
Economic, Social and Environmental Justice and Global Issues
Commit to ensuring that levels of social security support in Germany are sufficient to ensure the right to an adequate standard of living at all life stages
Poverty rates in Germany are increasing with certain groups such as single parents, older people, and larger families particularly hit by rising costs. Existing social security programs, such as the Citizen’s Income (Bürgergeld) and basic old age pension (Grundrente), can leave recipients perilously close to the official poverty threshold, which can fall below what is needed for people to realize their rights. A proposed child basic income (Kindergrundsicherung) has stalled.
Germany’s international human rights obligations, and its constitutional concept of minimum subsistence level (Existenzminimum) require it to ensure that social security payment levels are sufficient to guarantee the right to an adequate standard of living.
Commit to swiftly transposing the EU Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) into law
Strong mandatory human rights and environmental laws are needed that require companies to prevent and address human rights abuses globally. Germany should swiftly follow EU requirements and ambitiously transpose the EU Sustainability Due Diligence Directive into national law. The level of protection provided by the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act should be maintained and effective legal protection should be strengthened.
Support rights-aligned reform of international economic rules by backing the development of a strong UN tax convention, reform of the international financial architecture at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, and adequate financing for Global South countries to address the climate crisis.
Lack of funding for public services and social security and wide inequalities between and within countries are threatening human rights globally while compounding the climate crisis. With three major international negotiations ongoing (climate negotiations at COP30 and beyond, the Fourth International Conference on Financial for Development, and the UN Tax Convention), the next two years will be critical to reform some of the international economic rules to enable countries to regain fiscal space, and to rebuild trust in multilateralism by making the international economic system fairer.
Germany, which declined to actively support the start of formal negotiations for a UN Tax Convention, should stop blocking legitimate demands for reform of the international financial architecture that Global South countries in particular have prioritized, and be a champion within the EU for the bloc to uphold international human rights obligations with regard to economic, social and cultural rights.