A new report prepared by the Danish Institute for Human Rights, in collaboration with Børns Vilkår (Children’s Terms), finds that bullying related to ethnicity is widespread in Danish schools. Such bullying can have a signifcant effect on the (social) integration of children with a non-Danish background.

The report is based on a questionnaire answered by 1 568 primary school pupils in 6th and 9th grade. The responses show that:

• 51% of pupils with a minority ethnic background in Denmark have experienced being bullied because of their skin colour, nationality, religion or culture. It is worst for students with a non-Western background*. Among pupils with a majority ethnic background, this applies to 18%.
• 53% of all student respondents - both those with minority and those with majority ethnic background - said they have witnessed others being bullied on the basis of ethnicity.
• 19% of students with a non-Western background have experienced 'degrading behaviour' from their teachers that can be related to ethnicity. The same applies to 6% of students with a Western background and 3 percent of the majority ethnic pupils.

The report make 5 recommendations:

The Ministry for Children and Education should:

• ensure that definitions of a good environment for education should explicitly include freedom from bullying or discrimination due to ethnicity;
• publish material and inform schools and pupils about their rights, and guide schools on how to avoid bullying or discrimination due to ethnicity;
• include questions about bullying or discrimination due to ethnicity in Denmark's annual national questionnaire on well-being for the pupils;
• initiate a strengthening of competencies among teachers regarding unrecognised biases and how to prevent bullying or discrimination due to ethnicity.

Schools should:

• take the initiative to ensure a safe, comfortable environment for education for all pupils within the existing framework.

Danish law already requires that all schools have a strategy against bullying in general, but the authors recommend that a specific focus on ethnicity is introduced. This suggestion was dismissed by the Danish minister for education. Denmark does not yet have a national action plan against racism.

The report is in Danish with a 2-page English summary.

*) Denmark's statistics generally distinguish between residents with a foreign background from either ‘Western’ or ‘non-Western’ countries, rather than using the 'third-country national' descriptor. In the Danish context, 'Western countries' are understood to be all EU countries plus Andorra, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, United Kingdom, the United States and the Vatican. Those from any other country are defined by Denmark as 'non-Western'.