Call on Institutions for Conflict Resolution to publish intersectional data
The Research Network of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRANET) commissioned Aleydis Nissen and Rik Raedschelders to write the 2022 report on Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Belgium.
One of the main findings of the report is that there is a lack of specific gender-disaggregated data relating to complaints about racism in universities and government institutions. This is a missed opportunity. Kimberlé Crenshaw famously wrote that the discrimination of women of colour is ‘greater than the sum of racism and sexism’ when she coined the concept ‘intersectionality’. Institutions for conflict resolution can empower women of colour to claim their rights by measuring and publishing more specific and combined data. Discrimination against people who suffer multiple disadvantages remains invisible because it is not sufficiently measured.
The report discusses various other issues, including racist conduct against healthcare workers and patients and the rise of racism against people of perceived Asian origin during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report documented, in particular, various instances of xenophobia against people of perceived Asian descent in the Belgian media.
Read the full report here (in chapter 2).
Aleydis Nissen is a postdoc researcher on the project Institutions for Conflict Resolution at Leiden Law School. Her op-eds on racism and xenophobia have been published in The Independent and The Irish Examiner. Her research is also funded by Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO).