A/HRC/14/43/Add.2 whomever “incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them”, including through the dissemination of writings and broadcasts. Section 130.3 also provides for criminal sanctions against approval or denial of acts committed under the rule of National Socialism, which can be punished with imprisonment of up to five years. Applicable in the framework of article 4.4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Criminal Code also contains a prohibition on the activities of parties and organizations declared to be unconstitutional (sections 84 and 85), the propaganda of unconstitutional organizations (section 86) and the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations (section 86a). 14. With regard to racist crimes, section 46 of the Criminal Code establishes the principles that should be taken into account to determine punishment for criminal offences. These include a general reference to the “motives and aims of the perpetrator”, but no specific reference to racist motivations is included (see paragraphs 32–35 below for a discussion on this question). B. The General Equal Treatment Act 15. In 2006, the General Equal Treatment Act (Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz) was enacted by parliament, coming into force on 18 August 2006. The Act is in fact a transposition into German law of some key European Union (EU) anti-discrimination directives. As section 1 of the Act states, its purpose “is to prevent or stop discrimination on the grounds of race or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”.3 It prohibits discrimination on these grounds in a variety of areas, including employment, vocational training, membership or involvement in workers’ and employers’ organizations, social protection, health care, education and housing. In this regard, the Act is an important milestone in offering specific protection to vulnerable groups in Germany, creating a particular set of rights that can be pursued through the courts and making more specific the general equal treatment provision contained in the Constitution. 16. The Act also addresses the question of affirmative action in its section 5 entitled Positive Action, which provides that “unequal treatment shall only be permissible where suitable and appropriate measures are adopted to prevent or compensate for disadvantages arising on any of the grounds referred to under Section 1 occurred”. 17. According to various accounts, the enactment of the Act was a controversial process because of the concern, mostly of the private sector, that it would lead to increasing bureaucracy, particularly in relation to employment discrimination. It demanded therefore that political capital be invested by Government authorities to ensure its approval. While the fears expressed regarding the implications of the Act were shown not to be realistic, many interlocutors confirmed that there remains a degree of reluctance on the part of many actors to fully accept the provisions of the Act. 18. Civil society organizations pointed out that at present there is, to their knowledge, little resort to the Act by victims of discrimination, due primarily to lack of awareness of the law. In addition, the lack of data collection on racial discrimination by most public agencies also contributes to the difficulty in providing solid evidence of structural discrimination. Many organizations also highlighted the fact that there is no tradition of strategic litigation in Germany, therefore only a limited number of racial discrimination 3 6 The General Equal Treatment Act does not include language and nationality as protected grounds, as recommended by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) in its general policy recommendation No. 7 on national legislation to combat racism and racial discrimination. See ECRI, Fourth Monitoring Report on Germany, published on 26 May 2009, para. 25. GE.10-11624