Italian prosecutors and judges strengthen skills to respond to hate crimes at OSCE/ODIHR training course in Milan

A group of 30 Italian prosecutors and judges improved their ability to address hate crime during a training course co-organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) on 5 May 2017 in Milan, Italy.

The event, part of ODIHR’s Prosecutors and Hate Crimes Training (PAHCT) programme, inaugurated a series of activities to be carried out by ODIHR and its partner institutions to strengthen responses to hate crime in Italy.

“The complex phenomenon of hate crime needs a comprehensive, multi-faceted response,” said Tome Shekerdjiev, Project Manager at ODIHR. “This is why we have planned a wide variety of activities aimed at criminal justice professionals at different levels in Italy.”

The programme is being implemented in co-operation with Italy’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, with the Superior School for Magistrates as co-organizer for this event.

“With the support from ODIHR and together with our local partners, we intend to train different legal professionals dealing with hate crime,” said Mattia F. Ferrero, an expert advising the project locally and teaching assistant at the University. “In addition to this, we are going to review and propose recommendations to improve the hate crime data-collection system in the Court of Milan.”

The event was held as part of the two-year “Building Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime” project, implemented by ODIHR and its partners in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Poland. Financed by the European Commission and the United States, the project attempts to address hate crime through the criminal justice system. The lessons drawn from the activities carried out in the four countries will form the basis for a toolkit produced by the project applicable across the OSCE area.