Rape and Domestic Violence: Rape, including spousal rape and domestic violence, is illegal, and the government enforced the law effectively. Penalties range from two to 10 years in prison.

The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reported 7,958 cases of rape in 2018, an increase of approximately 8 percent compared with the previous year. Women and girls were victims in more than 93 percent of the cases. In approximately 17 percent of the cases, the abuser was convicted. Domestic violence remained a problem, and 11,522 cases were reported during 2018.

The law provides for the protection of survivors from contact with their abusers. When necessary, authorities helped survivors to protect their identities or to obtain new identities and homes. Both national and local governments helped fund volunteer groups that provided shelter and other assistance for abused women.

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): The law prohibits FGM/C. It is also illegal to perform FGM/C on a Swedish citizen abroad. The government developed a national action plan to prevent FGM/C and work with victims. In 2018 the National Board of Health and Welfare estimated approximately 40,000 victims of FGM/C were living in Sweden. In 2018, 38 cases of genital mutilation were reported to the police; all FGM/C had taken place abroad. The national clinic specializing in victims of FGM/C reported an 80 percent increase in visitors over the past two years.

Other Harmful Traditional Practices: Honor-related violence often involved immigrants from the Middle East or South Asia. The national support line for honor-related crime victims reported a significant increase of callers from approximately 20 per month in 2014 to 80 in 2018. Between January and September, the support line reported 44 cases of children being sent abroad for forced marriage. In August the Skane Court of Appeals sentenced a woman to six months in prison for unlawfully threatening to kill her 22-year-old son’s 19-year-old girlfriend unless she had an abortion, since the pregnancy was contrary to the older woman’s religion and culture.

Sexual Harassment: The law prohibits sexual harassment and provides for criminal penalties from a fine to up to two years in prison. The government generally enforced this law.

Coercion in Population Control: There were no reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization.

Discrimination: Women have the same legal status and rights as men, including under family, religious, personal status, labor, property, nationality, and inheritance law. Women were underrepresented in high-ranking positions in both the public and the private sectors.

Gender-based discrimination with respect to access to credit, owning or managing a business, and access to education and housing is prohibited and was not commonly reported. The government enforced the laws effectively.

Birth Registration: Citizenship is derived from one’s parents. The tax authority immediately registered in the national population register all children born in the country, regardless of their parents’ citizenship or immigration or residency status in the country.

Child Abuse: The law prohibits parents or other caretakers from abusing children mentally or physically. Penalties for such range from a fine up to 10 years in prison. Cases of child abuse were reported. Authorities may remove abused children from their homes and place them in foster care. The children’s ombudsman published a number of reports and publications for children and those working to protect children from abuse.

Early and Forced Marriage: The minimum age of marriage is 18, and it is illegal for anyone under 18 to marry. The government will legally recognize as valid the marriage of anyone who comes to the country after the age of 18, even if they were married abroad before the age of 18. The government does not recognize a foreign child marriage if either of the parties was a Swedish citizen or resident in Sweden at the time of marriage.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The law criminalizes “contact with children under 15 for sexual purposes,” including internet contact intended to lead to sexual assault. Penalties range from fines to one year in prison. The law prohibits the sale of children; penalties range from two to 10 years in prison. It also bans child pornography with penalties ranging from fines to six years in prison. Authorities enforced the law. The minimum age for consensual sex is 15.

Displaced Children: Stockholm police reported underage children, mainly from Morocco, Algeria, and other countries in North Africa, lived on the streets. Many of these children had sought asylum in the country but did not qualify and were at risk of removal. Social Services offered accommodation for children or foster families regardless of asylum status.

International Child Abductions: The country is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/International-Parental-Child-Abduction/for-providers/legal-reports-and-data/reported-cases.html.

Leaders of the Jewish community estimated there were 20,000 Jews in the country and approximately 6,000 registered members of Jewish congregations. The National Council for Crime Prevention (NCCP) registered 280 anti-Semitic crimes in 2018, compared with 182 in 2016. Anti-Semitic crimes included threats, verbal abuse, vandalism, graffiti, harassment in schools, and Holocaust denial. Anti-Semitic incidents were often associated with neo-Nazi movements and events in the Middle East and the actions of the Israeli government. Swedish Jews were often blamed for Israeli policies.

The most common forms of anti-Semitism were hate speech (45 percent of complaints), unlawful threats or harassment (34 percent), vandalism or graffiti (8 percent), and defamation (8 percent). Of the 182 investigations opened in 2016, 52 percent were dismissed, and 37 percent were directly dismissed without a formal investigation due to lack of evidence. Formal charges were brought in only 9 percent of the cases.

Police, politicians, media, and Jewish groups have stated that anti-Semitism has been especially prevalent in Malmo. The Simon Wiesenthal Center left in place its travel warning, first issued in 2010, regarding travel in southern Sweden, because Jews in Malmo could be “subject to anti-Semitic taunts and harassment.”

In February the Supreme Court overruled the appellate court’s decision not to expel a Palestinian man with “special refugee status” sentenced to two years in prison for attempting to firebomb the synagogue in Gothenburg in 2017. The man will serve his sentence and then be expelled. He is prohibited from returning to Sweden before 2028.

At a demonstration in Malmo on May 1 arranged by the Social Democratic Youth Association (SSU) demonstrators sang, “long life Palestine–destroy Zionism.” The demonstrators were reported for hate speech to police, who initiated an investigation. The SSU stated it understood the criticism and that it would stop singing the song.

On July 2, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a neo-Nazi group, held a meeting with a few participants in Visby during the annual Almedalen conference of the country’s political leaders. Later that day NMR members shouted denials of the Holocaust and attempted to block entrance into an exhibition featuring photographs of seven Holocaust survivors, which had been arranged by the Fotografiska Museum in central Visby. Police dispersed the NMR and initiated an investigation into hate speech.

In August an imam was convicted of hate speech following a demonstration in central Helsingborg in 2017. The imam received a conditional sentence and fines. During a speech, given in Arabic, he called Jews “the progeny of monkeys and pigs.”

A Jewish neurosurgeon at New Karolinska Hospital (NKS) reported continuing anti-Semitic harassment stemming from his 2017 report that the hospital’s chief of neurosurgery subjected him and two other Jewish colleagues to anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination. An internal investigation reportedly concluded no harassment had taken place. Following widespread media condemnation, the NKS demoted the accused surgeon in June for “violating the hospital’s core values” but without acknowledging anti-Semitism. The equality ombudsman undertook three inquiries into the hospital’s actions concerning the Jewish doctor’s claims. On October 7, the daily Svenska Dagbladet reported the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the Karolinska Institute (KI), an associated medical university that awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine but is not legally part of NKS, for failing to introduce zero tolerance against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. Mikael Odenberg, chairman of the KI board of directors, called the criticism “expected, but unfounded.”

A report published in December 2018 by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that more than 80 percent of Jewish-Swedes subjected to anti-Semitic harassment chose not to report the incident to the police because they believed nothing would be done about it. Approximately one-third of the more than 1,000 respondents said they avoided carrying Jewish symbols and were thinking about moving from the country for security reasons.

A web survey published in June by the polling institute Inizio found that more than half of the 1,001 respondents it interviewed believed anti-Semitism had increased over the previous five years. More than one-third experienced anti-Semitism in their everyday lives one or more times. More than two-thirds of the respondents were worried about anti-Semitism. The survey also showed that more than half of the country’s population indicated they knew about the Holocaust rather well. Only a small minority believed it was not important to remember the Holocaust.

For 2018 and 2019, the government allocated 22 million kronor ($2.3 million) for grants to increase security for threatened places of worship and other parts of civil society. All religious communities and civil society actors who believe they have been threatened may apply for the grant.

The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency continued to cooperate with religious communities on a national level to promote dialogue and prevent conflicts leading to anti-Semitic incidents. It continued to train police officers to detect hate crimes and visited high schools to raise awareness of such crimes and encourage more victims to report abuses. The government made information available in several languages for victims of hate crimes and provided interpreters to facilitate reporting. Police hate-crime officers operated throughout the country.

The Living History Forum is a public authority commissioned to address societal problems related to religious and ethnic tolerance, democracy, and human rights using the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity as its starting point. The Forum sensitized the public, and particularly the young, to the need to respect the equal value of all persons, with a specific focus on teaching about the Holocaust as a means of fighting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

The Media Council, a government agency whose primary task is to train minors to be conscious media users and to protect them from harmful media influences, initiated a No Hate Speech Movement campaign and worked to stop anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The government allocated five million kronor ($529,000) annually from 2018 to 2020 to strengthen opportunities for study visits to Holocaust memorial sites and allow more students and teachers to visit them.

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/.

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities. The government effectively enforced these provisions and held accountable those responsible for violations.

Government regulations require new buildings and public facilities to be fully accessible. Observers reported cases of insufficient access to privately owned buildings used by the public, such as apartments, restaurants, and bars. Some means of public transportation remained inaccessible.

Societal discrimination and violence against immigrants and Roma continued to be problems.

Police registered reports of xenophobic crimes, some of which were linked to neo-Nazi or white supremacy ideology. Police investigated and the district attorney’s office prosecuted race-related crimes. The Security Service estimated the total membership of violent extreme right-wing groups at 500 persons, strengthened by several hundred additional supporters who attend rallies. Neo-Nazi groups operated legally (see section 2.a.). The NMR was the largest white supremacy group with approximately 160 active members. The NMR registered as a political party and participated in the parliamentary and local elections in September 2018. It did not win any seats. During the year the NMR split. Eight neo-Nazis from the top leadership formed a new group called Nordisk Styrka (Nordic Strength). The new group opposes NMR’s “liberalization” and wants to focus more on “the struggle.” The NGO EXPO was concerned Nordisk Styrka would try to profile themselves on radical forms of violent activism.

The National Coordinator for Vulnerable EU Citizens estimated in February that 4,500-5,000 vulnerable EU citizens, the vast majority of whom were Roma from Romania and Bulgaria, resided in the country in abject poverty at any given time. As EU citizens, they are allowed to stay in the country without permission for up to three months, but authorities did not enforce this limit. Police stated that most Roma were in the country voluntarily but that there were cases of trafficking and forced begging. In December 2018 the Supreme Administrative Court determined that municipal bans on begging were compatible with the law. Since then, 11 municipalities issued begging bans. In some cases the municipality requires an official permit for persons looking to collect funds on city grounds.

Several districts in the country where a majority of the population was of immigrant origin or parentage suffered social segregation from the rest of the country. The result was lower levels of education, higher levels of unemployment, and separation from the country’s mainstream culture mainly due to poor Swedish-language skills.

In January amendments to the Act on National Minorities and Minority Languages came into force that strengthen the basic protection of the languages and culture of the national minorities. Among other things, the amendments require municipalities and county councils to adopt goals and guidelines for their minority policy work and provide members of national minorities the right to preschool and other educational activities and to elder care in their native languages.

The approximately 20,000 Sami in the country are full citizens with the right to vote in elections and participate in the government, including as members of the country’s parliament. They are not, however, represented as a group in parliament. A 31-member elected administrative authority called the Sami parliament (Sametinget) also represented Sami. The Sami parliament acts as an advisory body to the government and has limited decision-making powers in matters related to preserving the Sami culture, language, and schooling. The national parliament and government regulations govern the Sami parliament’s operations.

Longstanding tensions between the Sami and the government over land and natural resources persisted, as did tensions between the Sami and private landowners over reindeer grazing rights. Certain Sami have grazing and fishing rights, depending on their tribal history.

In August the Historical Museum in Stockholm repatriated the remains of 25 Sami individuals to their original resting place in an old cemetery in Lycksele. The remains were excavated in an archaeological study in the 1950s. In addition to a ceremony, both the Lycksele municipality and the Swedish Church carried out educational efforts as part of a reconciliation process.

On September 3, the Supreme Court opened the hearings in the case of Girja’s Sami village versus the state, a legal process started 10 years ago. The conflict centers around who holds the right to hunting and fishing in the Sami village area, the Sami village, or the state.

Antidiscrimination laws exist; apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex individuals; and were enforced.

In 2018 the NCCP identified 7,090 police reports with a hate crime motive, a majority with xenophobic motives.

In May the Staffanstorp municipal council voted to forbid veils, burqas and niqab among staff and students in preschools and schools up to grade six. The decision was appealed to the Administrative Court as a violation of religious freedom.

Police in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo have democracy and anti-hate crime groups. A National Center for Preventing Violent Extremism under the auspices of the NCCP serves as a clearinghouse for information, best practices, and support of municipalities, agencies, and other actors.