AEGEE stands for borderless Europe and no Europe can be  “borderless” with a barrier in between them. This barrier is not the barrier of roads, not the barrier of trees, not the barrier of Alps but, the barrier of us humanity known as discrimination. Equal Rights Working Group strives to break this barrier and make the Europe truly borderless. Here is an interview with Antonia von Richthofen , a policy officer from Equal Rights Working Group (ERWG) giving us information how ERWG works and their recent stand against rise of nationalism and discrimination throughout Europe.

How long have you been in AEGEE and in AEGEE-Dresden in particular? Why, would you say, someone should join AEGEE whatsoever?

I joined my local AEGEE-Dresden in December 2016, right after taking part in our event Develop Yourself 3, which was an amazing experience for me and thus it didn’t take me long to get addicted to our organization. I’d describe AEGEE in a few words: having fun, gaining skills, and of course: leaving your comfort zone! The challenges and adventures I already had in only two years are endless, and something I wouldn’t want to miss! Next to important friendships and crazy fun parties, the deeper level of AEGEE is what got me – and probably all of us. All those diverse possibilities on deepening your knowledge, getting valuable skills, voicing out young people’s opinions, fighting for a borderless Europe and Equal Rights. The richness of experiences is truly unique, and I am very thankful to have come this far – who knows what is still ahead!

What does ERWG stand for and what are their objectives? What is your personal role there? And What have you, and ERWG, achieved so far?

The abbreviation ERWG stands for Equal Rights Working Group of AEGEE-Europe. This group works on one of our Focus Areas: Equal Rights and strives to achieve certain objectives each year to make AEGEE more inclusive. We want to stress the importance of these topics, especially in today’s world! Fighting for equal opportunities, fair treatment and against harassment, discrimination, hate and injustice is a huge deal for all of us. Be it women’s rights, LGBTQI rights, migration problems, religious disparities. In the Working Group we want to help putting these issues back on AEGEE’s agenda, giving valuable input for example in booklets, toolkits, events or campaigns to push our members to face the world more open-minded. There are still many problems like the above-mentioned ones, also in AEGEE, we cannot ignore that. We are the youth of Europe, we are the future and will shape the world of tomorrow. Thus I see it as being a top priority to not ignore the problems, the discrimination, the hate we have to face daily, but to tackle them and create an even discussion amongst young people.

As high peaked as all this may sound, as Working Group we can only do that much – firstly, we are depending on the one thing that defines AEGEE: its members! The two terms our WG existed now, there were several great actions. As Policy Officer I am regularly writing statements on recent events, however, this is only a tiny bit of our work. Last year we developed a booklet on ER activities, there was a project where members travelled around to discover Prides, there were two big conferences on Equal Rights. This year we have high goals as well, we are managing the content of one Y vote convention in Tartu, we will support a few locals on organizing a TSU on ER, there are cooperations on LTCs with locals and we are supporting the Safe Person Project. By the way – this March there will be our Action Month and we are hoping to engage many locals to organize something in order to promote Equal Rights!

Where does ERWG of AEGEE Europe stand in relation to discrimination and recent nationalist movements in Europe?

The ERWG recently took a stand by writing a statement and supporting the initiative of the International Day against Fascism and Antisemitism on November 9^th calling upon locals to stand up against these worrisome developments in the world nowadays. It was pretty much a first for us, but I believe that what many people tend to forget is: discrimination is a widespread topic! It hits many minorities and genders, but we also tackle concerns like origin, religion, skin color, etc. We clearly condemn any prejudicial treatment of all kinds, and also want to position AEGEE-Europe more opposing towards these issues.

What can you say regarding your position on the recent nationalist movement in Chemnitz?

The events in Chemnitz, Germany in August 2018 were truly unsettling not only for the German state but it also had a big impact on international news. For me and especially for AEGEE-Dresden this was a definite time to speak up, after all, we are the AEGEE local closest to the city of Chemnitz, and thus also deeply inflicted by the terrible nationalistic demonstrations. As AEGEE I believe we MUST take a stand against occurrences like that, let alone because our values of a democratic, borderless, inclusive Europe do extremely differ from the motivations and voices that called many German citizens to the streets this past August and September. As a pro-European youth organization, we cannot sit silently and watch the downfall of justice and tolerance. This goes out for all other bodies of AEGEE, if you ever face a challenge like that! Just a small action can be meaningful already! That is why I value AEGEE a lot, we have some amazing initiatives and projects tackling discrimination and other problems of modern Europe. Be it Y vote to fight against political apathy or the activities through the Migration Interest Group during the Human Rights Day.

What were the problems you faced? Who were your opposition? How did you overcome the challenges and the barriers created by the opposition?

After the events of Chemnitz the topic was of course of high interest in AEGEE-Dresden. Luckily however, our group consists of very energetic, active members interested in politics, thus the decision was easily made that we had to take a stand against these nationalistic movements, as we already did against the so called PEGIDA group in Dresden, too. As a conclusion, including myself, we found very fast a few individuals who wanted to work on the statement, which we published on our website in September.

Something that I noticed after getting active on the European level of AEGEE was that on quite a few parts we are not as far as we might think. There are still many issues that we must tackle within our organization, too. First approaches were made when the Safe Person Project (SPP) was called to life, in order to ensure a safe environment for every member in our events. This project is growing bigger and bigger (recently SMASH was also finally founded) and I believe it will hit AEGEE big time this year. From ERWG’s side, I am also supporting the SPP team, since opposing sexual harassment is one of my key goals as an AEGEE member. That there are still many occasions where we can’t ensure a comfortable and inclusive sphere for all our members, is something me and my WG want to help changing during our term.

What impact have your activities made? Is there any particular image of Europe that ERWG members wish to attain?

As someone who studied Social Science, I’d say that the real impact is only very hardly measurable (haha). However, I still believe that with each and every action, with each and every voice, we might be able to make a change. I believe that bringing the topics up, taking a stand and having a debate is the first step to make a real impact. Broadening the minds of our members, making Equal Rights more present on our Agenda, these are the goals I share with my fellow amazing WG members. I sincerely hope that this focus stays essential in the Strategic Plan of AEGEE in the next period after 2020, too. Finally, all the ERWG and me are striving for a democratic, diverse and borderless Europe, too. [smiling]

On October 11, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) welcomed around 300 decision-makers and representatives of civil society, among which AEGEE, represented by the Policy Officer of the Equal Rights Working Group.

EIGE is an autonomous body of the European Union established to contribute to and strengthen the promotion of gender equality. During the morning’s panel discussions, the panellists presented the findings of the new Gender Equality Index 2017 and discussed possible solutions to gender inequalities during an event at the Council of the European Union in Brussels.

The Focus Area of Equal Rights has for aim to acknowledge and tackle discrimination based on gender identity, expression and sexual orientation, and promote equity from an intersectional perspective. To achieve this objective, it is absolutely necessary to have access to data revealing the situation of groups of people at the intersection of several grounds for discrimination. For the first time this year, the Gender Equality Index 2017 offers the possibility to compare gender equality between countries with an intersectional perspective.

The Gender Equality Index is a tool created four years ago to evaluate the progress of the EU and the member states and indicate how far (or close) we are from achieving gender equality. The Index measures gender gaps in six core domains – knowledge, time, power health, work and money – and provides comprehensive data in two other satellite domains, violence against women and intersectional inequalities.

The main conclusion of this year Gender Equality Index is the disappointingly slow progress towards Gender equality in Europe between 2005 and 2015, with important disparities between countries.

While gender equality in the domain of power (decision-making position across the political, economic and social sphere) is progressing slowly but steadily, gender inequalities in time use, referring to the allocation of time spent on care, domestic work and social activities are persisting and growing. Young women between ages 15-24 are for instance less likely to take part in leisure activities outside their home (39% of young women workers takes part in sporting, cultural or leisure activities outside of their home, at least daily or several times a week, against 56% of young men workers). They are also way more likely to care for children, elderly or people with disabilities everyday (15,4% of young women between 15-24 against 3,1% of young men).

The event also represented the opportunity to present the new key feature of this year’s Index, that is data on intersectional inequalities. The index provides data showing how gender intersects with age, education, family composition and parenthood, country of birth and disability. Due to the difficulty to gather data on certain types of discrimination, the Index however fails to cover intersections between, for instance, gender and sexual orientation or gender and religion.

These disaggregated data reveal some worrisome inequalities affecting people at the intersection of different identities. During the conference, Pirkko Mahlamäki (Executive committee member of the European disability forum) emphasised for instance the situation of women with disabilities, that are at risk of falling behind in the area of education and labour market, but also three to five times more likely to be victims of domestic abuses.

As underlined by MEP Ernest Urtasun, EU decision-makers have the duty to rely on those data to ensure that EU anti-discrimination policies do not leave groups of people without adequate protection.

To ensure that decision-makers implement evidence-based, inclusive legislations, the gathering of data needs to be strengthened considerably in most member states to obtain a clear picture of inequalities and intersecting discriminations. The Equal Rights Working Group is particularly pleased to see this emphasis on intersectionality and support EIGE’s call to stakeholders to improve the gathering of relevant data to ensure a complete and clear image of how different types of discrimination and inequalities intersect.

Get to know the situation of gender equality in your country, and let’s continue to strive for a more Equal Europe for all!

Written by Juliette Beaulaton, Policy Officer of Equal Right Working Group