Germany Case

Discrimination in education

The Case

With the support of German law firms and social scientists, the Open Society Justice (OSJI) Initiative is preparing to litigate a case concerning ethnic discrimination in the German educational system. The case will commence in November/December 2010, with the aim of taking it to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) once domestic remedies have been exhausted. The Essex HR Clinic supports this initiative by helping to set up a litigation strategy, developing arguments, and bringing those arguments and evidence together. Studies are currently focusing on Hamburg and Berlin (may be extended) and mainly on Turkish communities (may be extended). OSJI has litigated all the major education cases before the ECtHR.

The two main issues are:

• overrepresentation/wrongful assignment of children of migrant backgrounds (and children whose mother tongue is not German - “nicht-deutscher Herkunftssprache”) to ‘special education’ on grounds of language and learning ‘disabilities’;
• Overrepresentation/ wrongful assignment of children of migrant backgrounds (and children whose mother tongue is not German - "nicht-deutscher Herkunftssprache") to the lowest tiers of secondary education (Hauptschulen). This is true even for those with the same socioeconomic background. This is allegedly a result of segregated school classes, based on German language capabilities, but also based on separate religious education.

Partner Organisation

• Open Society Justice Initiative

Supervisor

Professor Francoise Hampson

Coordinator

Julia von Normann

Links

• Open Society Justice Initiative

Documents

As the case has just started, we cannot provide any documents yet.