Indicator history

Anti-racist/anti-discrimination activities of NGOs have been an important factor for changing the political disourse and policies in recent years. Concrete effects are difficult to measure, but NGOs' public relations work and acitivities monitoring racist incidents and anti-discrimination policies has been effective. Two examples can be noted: 

Afrophobia as a concept for the definition of racism and hatred directed at “black people” as a group.; The Centre Against Racism (CMR) has been instrumental in making the term Afrophobia established in Sweden and on the international level. In connection with CMR:s  annual meeting in 2006, it was decided that the term Afrophobia should be introduced in the The Centre Against Racism statues. This is in addition to other concepts like anti-Semitism, islamophobia, anti-Gypsyism, homophobia. 

A campaign was initiated encouraging the concept to be officially recognized also by policy makers, institutions, agencies and the general public. The impact of this campiagn and lobbying could already be seen in 2007/2008 when the concept Afrophobia came to appear for the first time in various official documents, from government regulations and in the annual official statistics on crime with racist motives that the State Crime-prevention council annually publishes. This has had the impact that Afrophobia is regarded as officially one of the hate crime motives in the Swedish official hate crime statistics (http://www.bra.se).

Campaign against “Neger” area in Karlstad; During the fall of 2009 The Centre Against Racism led a well organized and successful campaign to force municipal politicians in the Karlstad region to change the name of an area named “Kv. Neger”. The campaign´s highlight was a demonstration that had activists from Malmö and Stockholm. The campaign was carried out in cooperation with the Afro Swedish Association and the organization for Equality for Afro Swedes. A protest list was also presented to the city planning chairman and the impact of this campaign and lobbying led to the local council in Karlstad to abolish the naming of the area  “Kv. Neger”

The Centre Against Racism, http://www.centrummotrasism.nu