Understanding and Addressing Hate Crime: Training for Polish Civil Society Organizations

ODIHR’s workshop on hate crime will introduce civil society organizations (CSOs) to ODIHR’s hate crime methodology and will discuss its applicability in Poland. Over the course of two days, ODIHR will work with stakeholders from a number of Polish CSOs working on hate crime monitoring. 

Why it is important

ODIHR is mandated to support OSCE participating States and civil society organizations in their efforts to combat all forms of intolerance and hate crime. OSCE commitments related to hate crimes include: 

• strengthening legislation
• collecting reliable data
• building the capacity of actors in criminal justice systems
• encouraging victims to report
• supporting victims of hate crimes
• assisting civil society
• considering drawing on assistance programs developed by ODIHR in relevant areas

Since 2006, ODIHR has published information regarding statistics and information on hate crimes and incidents, national developments, initiatives to counter hate crime, and relevant legislation in all OSCE participating States on ODIHR’s website. 

Programme

On the first day of our workshop, participants will assess the extent and impact of bias, prejudice and intolerance in their respective communities, understand the far-reaching and sometimes unseen impact of these phenomena, discuss ODIHR’s definition of hate crime, and review the concept of hate crime bias indicators. 

On the second day, participants will discuss strategies for combating and monitoring hate crimes, explore Polish hate crime legislation, and review case studies that will provide them with an opportunity to apply what they have learned. 

Participants

The training will gather 20–25 civil society participants from across Poland. The participants will be selected on the basis of applications received through a call distributed to Polish civil society organizations. ODIHR will strive to establish a gender and geographic balance among participants.

Background

This online workshop is part of ODIHR’s project Turning Words into Action to Address Intolerance (WiA). Interpretation into Polish will be provided.

Registration

To participate, please register here (available in English or Polish) by 4 June, 2021 at 11:59 CET. 

For further inquiries, contact Griffin Ferry at griffin.ferry@odihr.pl.