Women
Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape of both women and men, including spousal rape, and the government enforced the law effectively. Rape is punishable by up to six years’ imprisonment. If the offender used violence, the offense is considered aggravated, and the penalty may be up to 10 years. All sexual offenses against adults, except sexual harassment, are subject to public prosecution. Sexual offenses against a defenseless person (such as because of unconsciousness, intoxication, or a disability) are considered as severe as rape.
Authorities may prosecute domestic abuse under various criminal laws, including as rape, assault and battery, harassment, and disturbing the peace. The penalty for physical domestic violence ranges from a minimum of six months to a maximum of 10 years in prison.
The legal definition of rape emphasizes intentional violence, which civil society organizations alleged leads courts to find assailants not guilty in cases where coercion was less explicit. In addition police must inquire about a party’s willingness to participate in reconciliation, which is usually engaged in before the case proceeds to the prosecutor. Reconciliation may be grounds for the prosecutor not to press charges, but even reconciliation where a mutual agreement has been reached does not prevent the prosecutor from pressing charges.
Gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence, continued to be a problem. The Finnish branch of Amnesty International estimated that more than 100,000 persons experienced violence annually in the country and that 76 percent of the victims were women. According to Amnesty International, only 10 percent of these incidents were reported to authorities and most of those reported did not lead to prosecution. While police are obligated to investigate domestic violence cases, many of the cases are referred to a mediator after which police do not closely track the cases. According to the Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), 36.3 percent of intimate partner violence cases were directed to mediation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of intimate-partner violence reported to police increased by 6 percent, and utilization of the online services of the Federation of Mother and Child Homes and Shelters grew by 11 percent over the same period. A government-funded provider of telephone support services for victims of violence against women and domestic violence also reported a 31 percent increase in individuals seeking assistance in 2020. From January through July, 160 cases of rape were reported to police or border guards, a 24 percent increase over the same period in 2020. The ombudsman for equality at the Ministry of Justice highlighted problems with access to domestic violence shelters in remote rural areas.
The government funded shelters specifically for victims of domestic violence. There were 29 shelters for victims of domestic violence, and the number of places available in shelters throughout the country increased to 231 from 179 in 2018. The Finnish branch of Amnesty International stated that 550 places were needed to support the number of victims properly and that some rural areas had very few shelters and insufficient space in those shelters. The Human Rights Center acknowledged the problem. A survey of shelter services published by the THL during the year found a decrease in the number of shelter clients since 2019. The use of social welfare and health care services that refer clients decreased during COVID-19 lockdowns, which contributed to a decrease in the use of shelters. The THL estimated that the total required number of family places in shelters varied between 262 and 367. The ombudsman for equality at the Ministry of Justice highlighted problems with access to domestic violence shelters in remote rural areas. Funding of support services for survivors of violence were predominantly provided from the revenue of a state-owned company operating slot machines and gambling.
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C): FGM/C is treated as aggravated assault under the law and may be punished with imprisonment or deportation. Taking a girl living in the country abroad for FGM/C is also considered a crime. The government generally enforced the law. A school health survey released by the THL in June 2020, the most recent data available, found that 0.2 percent of girls attending high school or vocational school had undergone FGM/C and that at least 10 girls who answered the questionnaire were mutilated in Finland. The population that most reported having undergone FGM/C were Somali-born residents.
Sexual Harassment: The law defines sexual harassment as a specific, punishable offense with penalties ranging from fines to up to six months’ imprisonment. Employers who fail to protect employees from workplace harassment are subject to the same penalties. The prosecutor general is responsible for investigating sexual harassment complaints. The government generally enforced the law.
Reproductive Rights: There were no reports of coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization on the part of government authorities.
In 2019 a group of parents, midwives, and doulas (nonmedical professionals who provide comfort and support to women during pregnancy and childbirth) organized a public campaign against alleged obstetric violence based on reports of episiotomies being performed during birth without informing or obtaining the consent of the mother and medical personnel pressuring pregnant women to consent to interventions and performing “violent internal examinations” on female patients.
The law requires that a transgender person present a medical certificate of infertility before the government may legally recognize their gender identity (see Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, below, for additional information.)
The government provided access to sexual and reproductive health services for survivors of sexual violence, and emergency contraception was available as part of the clinical management of rape.
Discrimination: The law provides for the same legal status and rights for women as for men. The government enforced the law effectively. Pregnant women experienced difficulties in finding a job, returning from leave, and renewing fixed-term contracts. The equality ombudsman estimated that half of all calls relating to workplace discrimination concerned discrimination based on pregnancy or issues involving return from parental leave (see also section 7.d.).
Systemic Racial or Ethnic Violence and Discrimination
The law specifically prohibits discrimination based on origin and nationality.
The public broadcaster Yle reported in July that the Helsinki Police Department fired two officers, including the chief of staff, for engaging in racist communications with far-right hate groups. Text messages revealed discussion of an upcoming “civil war,” with language particularly targeting the country’s Muslim, Somali, and Romani populations. The report indicated that an additional five police officers and one guard with ties to far-right groups were under investigation.
In June the chief inspector of the ombudsman for equality confirmed that security officials, including police, were observed profiling and discriminating against individuals based on their ethnicity. The statement confirmed the key finding of a 2018 study that found police officers, security guards, border agents, and customs officers targeted minorities due to their ethnic background or skin color.
Roma continued to face discrimination in all social sectors and were often targeted by law enforcement and security officials. An investigation by Yle in May indicated that internal guidelines issued by the Helsinki Police Department to record the movements of the Finnish Romani populations meant that the police were collecting personal information and detaining Roma without legal grounds beginning in 2013. Police representatives stated they had stopped recording the movements of the Finnish Romani populations in 2017. According to the Fundamental Rights Barometer survey, 53 percent of Finnish respondents would be uncomfortable with a Romani neighbor. Housing discrimination acutely affected Romani populations, but instances of housing discrimination for Roma were likely underreported. Between January and June, the Office of the Equality Ombudsman received 753 reports of housing discrimination.
In June 2020, the latest year for which statistics from the National Crime Victim Survey were available, the nondiscrimination ombudsman reported that 80 percent of respondents with an African background experienced discrimination because of their skin color, 67 percent encountered discrimination or harassment in education, 60 percent encountered discrimination in the workplace, and 27 percent also experienced physical violence. More than one-half of the respondents said they had not reported the discrimination to authorities because they believed reporting harassment would not accomplish anything. According to statistics from the Fundamental Rights Barometer Survey, 36 percent of Arabic-speaking respondents and 31 percent of Russian-speaking respondents experienced discrimination during employment or while searching for a job.
According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, having an immigrant background disproportionally influenced educational results for students: 45 percent of immigrant students were in the bottom quarter of the PISA index of economic, social, and cultural status, compared with 24 percent of nonimmigrant students.
According to a university researcher, students were often placed in Finnish-as-a-second-language classes regardless of their Finnish proficiency if their native language on record was something other than Finnish or if they had a “non-Finnish” name.
The nondiscrimination ombudsman is responsible for responding to complaints of discrimination and regularly mediated between business owners, government agencies, and public service providers regrading treatment of customers and clients. The Ministry of Justice also responds to complaints of discrimination.
The government strongly encouraged tolerance and respect for minority groups, sought to address racial discrimination, and assisted victims.
In January Helsingin Sanomat reported that the banned Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) continued to operate out of public sight and without a clear name. In June prosecutors charged nine NRM members with engaging in illegal association for continuing NRM activities under the organization of the group Toward Freedom! (Kohti Vapautta! in Finnish) and leading a demonstration at Tampere Central Market in October 2020. The NGOs Save the Children and Hope Not Hate both reported that far-right youth groups such as the National Partisan Movement had used pandemic lockdowns to recruit minors online. The Finnish Intelligence Service highlighted that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism in online platforms was a significant source of radicalization in the country. Leaders in both the Jewish and the Muslim minority communities stated that, while extremist websites were not a new phenomenon, the types of websites and forums targeting citizens expanded over the previous year.
In September the Ministry of Justice and the nondiscrimination ombudsman launched the “I am Antiracist” campaign to encourage individuals to act antiracist in their daily lives and consider the effects of racism more broadly in society. The campaign was part of the Ministry of Justice’s “Together for Equality” project, which received funding from the EU’s Fundamental Rights, Equality, and Citizenship Program.
Indigenous Peoples
The constitution provides for the protection of the Sami language and culture, and the government financially supported these efforts. The Sami, who constituted less than 0.1 percent of the population, have full political and civil rights as citizens as well as a measure of autonomy in their civil and administrative affairs. A 21-member Sami parliament (Samediggi), popularly elected by the Sami, is responsible for the group’s language, culture, and matters concerning their status as an indigenous people. It may adopt legally binding resolutions, propose initiatives, and provide policy guidance.
Reports issued by the Sami parliament in February and December 2020 found that the linguistic rights of the Sami were not realized in the way intended by the constitution and the Sami Language Law. Shortcomings involved the number of Sami language personnel, the accessibility of services, and the fact that, contrary to provisions of the Sami Language Law, Sami people must still separately invoke their linguistic rights for them to be recognized. Speakers of Inari Sami and Skolt Sami were in the most vulnerable positions, according to the report. The number of students in all Sami languages decreased by 3.5 percent to 710 pupils nationwide from 2020. In addition, as services were moved online and to centralized service telephone lines, authorities did not take into consideration the possibility of accessing these services in the Sami languages. Funds appropriated for Sami language social and health care have not been indexed to inflation since 2004, and there were fears that social and health-care reforms could further deplete services. There was also poor availability of Sami language prekindergarten personnel, and the funding of Sami language prekindergarten programs was inadequate.
The ombudsman for gender equality stated that Sami victims of domestic violence were at a disadvantage in accessing public shelters due to the long distances between population centers in the northern part of the country.
In May the Regional Council of Lapland agreed to rewrite its draft provincial plan for the period until 2040 to exclude the Arctic railway line from Helsinki to the northern border. Sami objected to plans for the railway, citing the railway’s potential impact on natural resources critical for their livelihoods, including reindeer-herding land and Arctic nature tourism.
Children
Birth Registration: A child generally acquires citizenship at birth through one or both parents. A child may also acquire citizenship at birth if the child is born in the country and meets certain other criteria, such as if the parents have refugee status in the country or if the child is not eligible for any other country’s citizenship. A local registration office records all births immediately.
Child Abuse: The law prohibits child abuse, defining children as individuals younger than 16. Child neglect and physical or psychological violence carry penalties of up to six months in prison and up to two years in prison, respectively. Sexual abuse of a child carries a minimum penalty of four months’ imprisonment and a maximum of six years. The law defines rape of a minor (younger than 18) as aggravated rape. Rape of a child carries a minimum penalty of two years’ and a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment. Aggravated rape of a child carries a minimum penalty of four years’ and a maximum of 12 years’ imprisonment. In October a man was sentenced to four months in prison for physically assaulting his six-year-old son during a summer vacation. The boy’s older brother was a witness to the assault. The man had two previous convictions for assaulting the mother of the child. The prison sentence was converted to 120 hours of community service.
Child, Early, and Forced Marriage: The minimum age of marriage is 18; the law disallows marriage of individuals under that age. In the first half of the year, the National Assistance System for Victims of Human Trafficking reported 19 new cases of forced marriage. In 2020 the system assisted 45 women and girls, a slight decrease from 2019, considered to have been subjected to forced marriage. Many of these marriages occurred when the victim was underage.
Sexual Exploitation of Children: The country prohibits the commercial sexual exploitation of children, including child pornography and the sale, offering, or procuring of children for commercial sex. The law prohibits purchase of sexual services from minors and covers “grooming” (enticement of a child), including in a virtual environment or through mobile telephone contacts. Authorities enforced the law effectively.
The minimum age for consensual sex is 16. The law regards a person whose age cannot be determined, but who may reasonably be assumed to be younger than 18, as a child.
From January to June, there were 993 reported cases of child exploitation, compared with 838 cases reported during the same period in 2020. In June police passed to prosecutors a case involving a man suspected of multiple counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, aggravated child rape, and the possession and dissemination of indecent images of children. As of September all of the more than 30 victims identified were girls between the ages of eight and 14.
In June a man was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for aggravated child sexual abuse, rape, and attempted rape committed against two minors, ages seven and nine, in 2019 and 2020. The perpetrator’s self-reporting the crimes and cooperating with the prosecution reduced the sentence by six months.
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.
Anti-Semitism
Government statistics and Jewish leaders place the size of the Jewish population between 1,500 and 2,500 individuals, most living in the Helsinki area.
Stickers and posters with anti-Semitic images and messages were placed on the synagogue of Helsinki’s Jewish congregation, in neighborhoods with significant Jewish populations, and on public property throughout the year. The vandalism ranged from targeted to apparently random, and similar incidents had occurred numerous times over the previous three years. Some of the anti-Semitic graffiti and stickers claimed to be from the banned NRM. Stickers specifically targeted Jewish community members at lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) pride events. Representatives of the Jewish community reported that, despite available video and photographic evidence of the perpetrators, police made no arrests in the incidents.
Debates on religious practices of animal slaughter with respect to kosher products and on nonmedical male circumcision often used direct or veiled anti-Semitic language (see Other Societal Violence or Discrimination, below).
The government provided funding for the security of the Helsinki synagogue, but the Central Council of Finnish Jewish Communities reported that funding had recently been cut in half. Representatives of the Jewish community reported feeling under threat and specifically targeted due to their beliefs.
On August 30, the Helsinki District Court ruled that the men who carried swastika flags in the 2018 Independence Day demonstrations of the Finnish neo-Nazi organization Toward Freedom! were not guilty of ethnic agitation. The court found that the defendants had not directly threatened or insulted a specific ethnic group.
Trafficking in Persons
See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at https://www.state.gov/trafficking-in-persons-report/.
Persons with Disabilities
During the year a report on the results of the Fundamental Rights Barometer survey published by the Ministry of Justice found that 40 to 60 percent of persons with disabilities disagreed or strongly disagreed that public administration and local authorities adequately facilitated access to information depending on the specific issue, and 29 percent of persons with disabilities stated they had been treated disrespectfully by public administrations. The Ministry of Interior noted that only two police officers in the country were able to communicate in sign language and that access to services for persons with disabilities continued to be a problem. There were no existing comprehensive assessments of the state of accessibility of public buildings. An estimate from 2019, the most recent data available, suggested that 15 percent of residential buildings were accessible. Municipalities must organize reasonable transport services for persons with disabilities if they are needed to manage daily life functions. Municipalities reported problems in the availability and quality of transport services, particularly during major events, on-call times, and evenings and weekends. The constitution and law prohibit discrimination against persons with disabilities in all fields, including the provision of government services.
According to the Finnish Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (FAIDD), most children with disabilities were included in early childhood education in the same classes as other children. In primary schools there were fewer opportunities for children with disabilities to attend classes or participate in organized hobby groups with peers. According to statistics, 114 children with intellectual disabilities lived in institutional settings. The resources available varied across different municipalities. According to FAIDD, reforms to vocational education reduced the opportunities for young persons with disabilities to receive necessary professional training and find employment. The nondiscrimination ombudsman highlighted that inclusion in education was a complicated matter because, while some groups advocated for more inclusion, other advocacy groups noted that increased inclusion was not in the best interest of some persons in their community.
The law requires an authority, education provider, employer, or provider of goods to ensure equal opportunities for persons with disabilities to deal with the authorities, gain access to education, and work through reasonable accommodations. The parliamentary ombudsman’s annual report published in June saw an increase in complaints (from 281 in 2019 to 306 in 2020) regarding the rights of persons with disabilities. During the same period, a total of 80 complaints related to the COVID-19 pandemic concerned persons with disabilities, mainly regarding social and health-care administrative matters.
Wheelchair-accessible voting became more common, in part in response to a call for greater accessibility at polling sites by the Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The parliamentary ombudsman noted there was still room for improvement (see also Section 3, Recent Elections). Persons with disabilities, including blindness, may use a personal assistant of their choice or the assistance of an election official when voting. A report by the Human Rights Center noted that dependence of the blind on assistants to mark their ballots did not sufficiently recognize the needs of persons with disabilities. The Association of the Deaf stated that the deaf community did not receive enough information in sign language about political and public affairs, which, in practice if not by law, limited participation in politics.
According to civil society groups, municipalities routinely did not budget enough money to provide such services and provided only the minimum services required by law regardless of the actual need for services. Sometimes services were denied, and the person with a disability was instructed to appeal the decision, since an appeal lengthens the process of granting services.
An expert from a civil society group asserted that legislation and practices surrounding labor and daily activities of persons with mental disabilities needed comprehensive reform. Gaps in the law created conditions where businesses could employ persons with disabilities for so-called rehabilitative work without pay. The system does not take into consideration that individuals with intellectual disabilities are often capable of full- or part-time wage-labor on the same basis as others. Social welfare legislation defines labor activities as maintaining and improving capabilities, and a municipality may grant tax-free pay of between zero and 12 euros ($13.80) an hour for such activities. If the work requires guidance, it is seen as a daily activity rather than labor, meaning an employee may not receive even food in exchange for hours of work. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health acknowledged that too many persons with intellectual disabilities were not paid for their work.
Acts of Violence, Criminalization, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
The law requires that a transgender person present a medical statement affirming the individual’s gender identity and a certificate of infertility before the government may legally recognize their gender identity. To obtain the medical statement that includes an affirmation of gender, transgender persons must first undergo a psychiatric monitoring process and receive a psychiatric diagnosis, a process that organizations, activists, and transgender persons criticized as causing significant harm, distress, and humiliation. Access to specialized treatment services is only available after a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” which lasts for at least two years, thereby creating barriers to gender affirming procedures.
In addition to the requirement that an individual submit to sterilization, activists criticized the duration of the legal process, stating it could take up to three years to obtain identity documents with the new gender markers. In April a citizens’ initiative to reform laws for obtaining legal gender recognition, to extend legal redress opportunities to juvenile minors, and the abolition of a centralized database on past gender transitions garnered 50,000 signatures. Trafficking authorities and civil society stated they had no specialized services for transgender victims of trafficking in persons and were unaware of their status among the trafficking-victim population.
While the law prohibits “conversion therapy” in medical settings, it continued to be practiced privately, most commonly in religious associations. According to local activists, children in the Pentecostal Church community continued to be provided material that encourages sexual orientation conversion.
The law prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation in housing, employment, nationality laws, and access to government services, and the government enforced the law. Stickers for the banned NRM targeted LGBTQI+ pride events, inter alia.
Other Societal Violence or Discrimination
On March 11, the Central Finland District Court dismissed the charges against a man with links to far-right groups of the attempted murder of the Finns Party’s election manager for Central Finland, Pekka Kataja. Kataja was attacked at his home in July 2020 and suffered a fractured skull, cerebral hemorrhage, and broken ribs and fingers. The district court ruled that the crime was a political act, but the charges brought against the defendant were based on circumstantial evidence.
In May the Pirkanmaa District Court convicted and fined for libel, aggravated libel, and ethnic agitation a former leader of the Finnish People First Party, Marco de Wit. During the 2019 campaign, de Wit published and disseminated election advertisements claiming all Muslims were sex offenders and published articles online threatening Jews, refugees, and asylum seekers. He was also found guilty of aggravated libel for accusing the police force of child sexualization after some police participated in Helsinki LGBTQI+ pride activities in uniform. De Wit had previously been sentenced to parole for violence against an official.
Religious community leaders stated that debates on religious practices of animal slaughter with respect to kosher and halal products and on nonmedical male circumcision used direct or veiled anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim language. Materials produced by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health called nonmedical male circumcision a violation of child bodily integrity and self-determination.