The Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities, Unia, opened 643 cases about racism in 2024 – amounting to almost two cases per day. Most files are in the area of work and employment.
Just under a third of all racism cases (29%) are related to people's working life. These include problems in employment relations, unfair dismissals or bullying based on origin. As discrimination in the workplace remains a persistent problem, Unia is reiterating its plea to introduce anonymous calls and tests.
"This translates into problems with colleagues, customers, managers, as well as discriminatory refusals to hire someone or unfair dismissals," the organisation said. "It also often involves bullying: for example, some people resign because they are regularly insulted because of their origin."
In other cases, it involves people who do not receive a response to an application with a foreign-sounding name, but who are invited when they apply with a 'Belgian' sounding name, Unia added.
Racism in healthcare
About a fifth of racism-related complaints (19%) are related to housing, healthcare and means of transport. These include, for example, the refusal to rent out a home or discrimination in healthcare. Unia had the latter form of racism investigated.
The research also showed that victims of racism feel less well treated by healthcare providers. As a result, this group also postpones healthcare more often.
Another fifth of the cases (19%) concern more societal cases: for example, Unia has seen a sharp increase in the number of cases of anti-Semitism since the outbreak of the conflict between Hamas and Israel on 7 October 2023.
The number of racism cases did decrease slightly compared to 2023. At that time, Unia opened a total of 670 racism-related cases.
