Hibba Kauser, a city councilor in the central-German city of Offenbach, is one of 60 prominent women who signed a public letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz this week, urging him to follow up on his statements expressing concern over the safety of women in German cities. The signatories call for action and concrete measures to improve the safety of women in Germany.
This comes two weeks after the chancellor said that irregular immigration to Germany had fallen since he took office, adding “we still have this problem in the cityscape,” which was understood as a reference to visible diversity in Germany’s population.
Merz was unapologetic, doubling down on his comment the following week by telling a reporter who asked him to clarify it to “ask your daughter what I might have meant.”
This has been called out by critics as racist for implying that immigrant men are more likely to commit sexual harassment or other crimes, a claim not borne out by data.
German chancellor under fire for immigration comments
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Merz’s remarks triggered an extremely heated debate. There werestreet protests in several cities against the chancellor’s words. Kauser, the 25-year-old daughter of Pakistani immigrants, gave the first speech at the protests in Berlin.
Now she is supporting the initiative that wrote the letter, called “We are the daughters — 10 demands to Friedrich Merz for our safety.” The group’s letter covers a wide range of topics ranging from better lighting and surveillance of public spaces to improvements in the prosecution of sexual and domestic violence.
Women demand better protection
“I signed it right away,” Hauser says, adding, “I think it’s very important that if we’re going to discuss the safety of our daughters, we at least do it properly. Women’s shelters need to be better funded, and should not have to turn any women away.”
One very important point for Kauser is accessibility: “If a woman doesn’t have a German passport or doesn’t speak enough German, she shouldn’t be discriminated against,” she says.
Kauser says she feels shaken by the discussions of the past few weeks. Born in a refugee shelter in Brandenburg, she joined the federal executive committee of the center-left Social Democrat party’s youth wing two years ago and was even honored in 2024 for her outstanding commitment to local politics. Hers is a picture-perfect rags-to-riches story, but despite this, the current debate makes her feel her efforts are not being recognized.
“I was shocked, very sad and very hurt,” Kauser says. “No matter what we do, no matter what we say, whether we graduate from college here, whether we change the world, whether we have a positive impact on society, we always have to prove ourselves twice or three times as much to show that we belong here. Even though that shouldn’t really be a question, because we were born and raised here. But why are people constantly talking about us like this?”
Even her relatives in Pakistan were perplexed and asked what kind of debates Germany was having, Hibba Kauser says.
Hibba Kauser says she feels shaken by Chancellor Merz’s recent statemensImage: Martin Leissl
Fear in public spaces
When German TV talk shows on the subject of immigration recently began focusing on the safety of women, especially in public spaces, as the central topic of discussion, Kauser felt it was high time to take a stand.
For decades, urban spaces have been designed from a purely male perspective, with a focus on traffic, functionality and economic efficiency. However, often key elements important to women are missing: good visibility, places to find refuge in an emergency, and constant lighting.
A survey commissioned by the newspaper Die Zeit in April 2025 showed that 74% of male respondents said they feel safe in public spaces, compared to only 56% of women — despite an overall decline in crime rates in Germany.
Digital hate speech against women is on the rise
One of the ten demands in the open letter is to provide women with greater protection against sexism and racism online.
As a young local politician, Hibba Kauser experiences this firsthand on a daily basis.
“I experience racism online every day. I constantly receive messages where people insult me and make racist or sexist comments.”
“Why does Instagram allow people I block to create new accounts and continue their hate speech?” Kauser asks. “This is something that both politicians and tech companies themselves need to address.”
Judith Rahner, the executive director of the German Women’s Council, is campaigning to improve safety for women in GermanyImage: Tanja Schnitzler
The most dangerous place for a woman is her home
Judith Rahner tells DW she still feels irritated by the chancellor’s recent comments. The executive director of the German Women’s Council says she has been receiving phone calls, emails and social media comments from angry women for days, who are venting their anger at Merz. These are women who have long been fighting for German authorities to do more to combat domestic violence and violence in relationships.
“The safety of women in Germany is under massive threat, especially from domestic violence,” Rahner says. “Violence against women continues to increase, online, on the streets, but especially at home. So it is precisely where women should feel safest that they are in danger.”
Femicide: Germany working on revision of murder law
However, Federal Minister of Justice Stefanie Hubig (SPD) has dampened expectations that criminal law will be amended in the near future to make it possible to punish femicide, i.e., the killing of a woman because of her gender, more severely.
Nevertheless, the current government has vowed to improve criminal law protection for women.
“Our state must do more to prevent femicide,” said Hubig, when she presented her proposal for the introduction of electronic ankle tags into the Protection Against Violence Act.
The act, introduced in 2001, enables family courts to issue civil protection orders to protect threatened persons (usually women) from being approached again by their attacker. If the perpetrator violates such a prohibition, he faces imprisonment for up to two years or a fine.
In the future, in high-risk cases, there is to be additional preventive protection, requiring the man to wear a GPS transmitter on his ankle, which alerts the victims and the police if he approaches the person he previously attacked.
This is a long-overdue and important step, says Rahner, citing Spain as a role model, where electronic ankle bracelets were introduced back in 2009.
Spain: A whole country unites against femicide
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Activists argue that more counseling centers are needed, and above all, local authorities need more financial resources to equip women’s shelters.
Adequate funding for women’s shelters and safe houses is a key demand in the open letter to Chancellor Merz. There are only 400 women’s shelters and safe houses in Germany, with space for just 7,000 women. Many of the facilities are hopelessly overcrowded.
However, the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women estimates that three times as many places are needed in Germany. Judith Rahner says that women seeking protection often have to travel far to find refuge.
“The most absurd thing is that many women have to pay for their stay in a women’s shelter. So they first experience violence from their partner, then manage to flee their home, seek protection in a women’s shelter and end up being presented with the bill for their accommodation. I think that really symbolizes the state of violence protection for women in Germany,” Rahner says.
Violence Assistance Act: a first step toward greater safety for women
In early 2025, Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Greens, and the SPD pushed the Violence Assistance Act through parliament, which guarantees women affected by violence free legal counseling and protection from 2032.
Judith Rahner considers this to be a milestone. “I am hopeful that the debate will now be conducted seriously and that Chancellor Merz will also listen to what daughters have to say,” she concludes.
This article has been translated from German.
