
Germany
Northern, Southern and Western Europe
Women
Germany ranks 20 out of 162 countries in the Gender Inequality Index, where a high rank equals high equality. Women should always be considered as a particularly vulnerable group though.
Children
Germany has a Workplace Index score of 2.3, a Marketplace Index score of 2.2 and a Community and Environment Index score of 1.5 in the Children’s Rights and Business Atlas, where countries receive scores between 0 and 10. A score closer to 0 reflects a need for basic children’s rights due diligence, while a higher score reflects a need for enhanced or heightened due diligence. Children should always be considered as a particularly vulnerable group though.
Persons with Disabilities
Due to differences in data collection and definitions it is difficult to compare countries on disability prevalence rates. Persons with disabilities should always be considered as a particularly vulnerable group though.
Minorities and Indigenous Peoples
According to the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Germany has four recognized national minorities: Danes 50,000 (concentrated in Schleswig-Holstein state), Frisians 60,000-70,000 (based in Eastern and Northern Frisia), Sorbs 60,000 (primarily in Saxony and Brandenburg) and Roma/Sinti (estimated at 105,000 by the Council of Europe, though this includes community members without German citizenship; other estimates have previously suggested that there are around 60,000 Sinti and 10,000 Roma who are German citizens while the total number including non-German citizens has been put at 70,000 Sinti and 40,000 Roma). There is no official data collection on ethnicity. Statistics on migration are often used as a proxy. According to 2018 micro–census data from the Federal Statistical Office, around a quarter of the population have a migration background. The largest EU migrant community are Poles. Other larger European groups include Turks and Russians. People coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan represent the largest refugee communities. Germany is also home to a relatively small Jewish community, although numbers have rebounded since the devastation wrought by the Holocaust. By 1945, only 15,000 Jews had survived of the more than 500,000 living in the country in the 1930s. Germany’s current Jewish population is thought to comprise approximately 200,000 people. The majority either migrated or are descendants of migrants from what was then the Soviet Union.
Migrant Workers
According to the ILO Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers, migrant workers as a proportion of all workers is 18.4 % in the subregion Northern, Southern and Western Europe.
Persons in Armed Conflict
Germany ranks 167 out of 179 countries in the Fragile States Index, where a high rank equals high fragility. For monthly crisis updates, check out CrisisWatch.