Workshop on Understanding and Improving Hate Crime Recording and Data Collection in Bulgaria

The two-day event consists of a high-level workshop to raise awareness of the need to strengthen Bulgaria’s response to hate crimes, and a technical workshop with practitioners from civil society, the police, the prosecution service, the judiciary and relevant ministries. The workshop is co-organized by ODIHR, FRA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria.  The event is part of ODIHR’s Information Against Hate Crime Toolkit (INFAHCT) programme.

Bulgaria does not have a system in place to record hate crimes as a separate crime category. As a result, when victims report, hate crimes are often labeled as hooliganism and insufficient evidence is collected to allow for successful prosecution of these cases as bias-motivated crimes.

The main purpose of the event is to identify changes in Bulgaria’s crime registration system necessary to enable proper recording and collection of statistics on hate crime. The high-level awareness-raising event is designed to ensure support from ministerial and police hierarchies for the integration of workshop outcomes into police practices. Additionally, the applicability of other INFAHCT solutions will be explored at the event.

The workshop will be opened by the Minister of Interior and other high-level participants, including Deputy Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Justice and Interior, the Director General of the Police and the President of the Commission against Discrimination. In addition, 25 police, prosecution and civil society representatives will participate in the discussions.