AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 2016/17

Discrimination and the Council of Europe
Commissioner for Human Rights.
Dozens of anti-refugee and anti-Muslim
demonstrations were staged throughout the
country. In the first nine months of the year,
authorities registered 813 crimes against
asylum shelters. In the same period, 1,803
crimes against asylum-seekers were
registered by the authorities, 254 of them
resulted in bodily injuries. The authorities
failed to put in place an adequate
national strategy to prevent attacks on
asylum shelters.
Civil society organizations continued to
report discriminatory identity checks by
police on members of ethnic and
religious minorities.
In June, the Federal Court of Justice
rejected the request of an intersex person to
be legally registered according to a third
gender option. The applicant’s appeal was
pending before the Federal Constitutional
Court at the end of the year.
COUNTER-TERROR AND SECURITY
In October, Parliament passed a new law on
surveillance that granted the Federal
Intelligence Service broad powers to subject
non-EU citizens to surveillance without
effective judicial oversight and for a wide
range of purposes, including national
security. In August, several UN special
procedures, including the Special Rapporteur
on freedom of expression, expressed concern
regarding the negative impact of the law on
freedom of expression and the lack of judicial
oversight.
In April, the Federal Constitutional Court
ruled that some of the surveillance powers of
the Federal Criminal Police Office, which had
been introduced in 2009 to counteract
terrorism and crimes more generally, were
unconstitutional. In particular, some of the
measures did not ensure the respect of the
right to privacy. Those provisions remained in
force pending their amendment.
ARMS TRADE
In March, the government put in place the
necessary legal framework for selective postshipment
controls to improve the monitoring
of German exports of war weapons and
specific types of firearms to ensure
compliance with end-use certificates and that
they were not used to commit human rights
violations. Under these controls, the
whereabouts of exported war weapons would
be checked post-shipment in the recipient
countries. Governments receiving German
military equipment would have to declare in
an end-use statement that they agree to onthe-spot
controls. Such end-use statements
were signed for at least four licensed small
arms exports. The government was
implementing the first pilot phase of the new
mechanism at the end of the year.
CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY
In August, the Regional Court of Dortmund
accepted to exercise jurisdiction over a legal
claim brought in 2015 by four Pakistani
victims against the German clothing retailer
KiK and granted them legal aid. In
September 2012, 260 workers died and 32
were seriously injured in a fire that destroyed
one of the main textile factories in Pakistan
supplying KiK.
In December, the government adopted a
National Action Plan to implement the UN
Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights. However, the Plan did not include
adequate measures to comply with all
standards set out in the Principles and did
not ensure that German business enterprises
exercise due diligence to respect human
rights.
GHANA
Republic of Ghana
Head of state and government: John Dramani Mahama
Concerns were raised about the rights of
women and children, discrimination against
people with disabilities, and legal
shortcomings in relation to human rights
protection. Lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people
168 Amnesty International Report 2016/17