The Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR), also referred to as Centre for Equal Opportunities and Fight against Racism (CEOFR) or translated as Centre for Equal Opportunities and Struggle against Racism (Dutch: Unia (Interfederaal Gelijkekansencentrum), before: Centrum voor gelijkheid van kansen en voor racismebestrijding or CGKR, French: Centre pour l'égalité des chances et la lutte contre le racisme or CECLR) is a Belgian government agency under the responsibility of the Prime Minister of Belgium. It's director is Jozef De Witte.
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The Centre was founded in 1993 by an Act of the Belgian Chamber of People's Representatives.
Tasks and goals
The Centre lists as its principal tasks:
The CEOOR has as its main goal to aid victims of discrimination, after an act of discrimination has occurred, or to prevent such acts.
It has four ways of achieving this goal :
Cases
The CEOOR was, together with the Liga voor Mensenrechten (Human Rights League), a plaintiff in the law case that led to the conviction of three Vlaams Blok organisations for "incitement to hate and discrimination."
In April 2002 the Centre lodged a complaint against the Centre Islamique et Culturel de Belgique because of a video on its website in which Israel was equated with a Nazi dictatorship. In June 2002, the CEOOR lodged another complaint against the Belgian Arab European League, also for racism.
Criticism
The Centre has been criticized by, among others, Matthias Storme. Storme sees the Centre as leading a "political inquisition" in suppressing alternative political views. Storme was earlier successful in fighting a case before the Belgian Supreme Court, where he showed that some articles of the Belgian anti-discrimination law were in violation with the constitutionally protected right of freedom of speech. However, Storme himself was named in 2014 as administrator of this Interfederal Centre. Another publisher at the The Brussels Journal, Paul Beliën, withdrew a text upon the Centre's officially filed complaint.
On 21 July 2004, the Centre together with the Dutch-speaking Human Rights League in Belgium received the country's annual "Democracy Award". It is given to persons or organisations that "protect or enhance political democracy or facilitate the participation of citizens in society". The jury from the organisations, Trefpunt and the anti-globalist Democratie 2000, awarded this prize to the Centre and Liga for their role in the condemnation of the Vlaams Blok in a case before the Ghent Court of Appeals.
In November 2010, the Centre came under scrutiny and received protests from Parliamentarians after that it was confronted with anti-Judaic texts published on their website regarding stoning of women. The Centre removed thereafter the racist texts from their site.
Financials
The 2005 financial report of the Centre showed that of its total revenue of €6.2 million, €4.4 million came from the Belgian National Lottery and €1.0 million from the Centre's projects. Expenditure for personnel were €4.0 million. The Centre posted a net result of €705,000 in 2005. The balance at the end of the year 2005 showed, that the Centre's equity was €4.94 million.