STAND-UP Newsletter No. 5 was released in January 2024. It was the last newsletter of the project and it gathered information about all partners’ activities from September 2023 and January 2024, including the final event in Brussels that marked the end of the two-year project.
You can read it on the following link: STAND-UP Newsletter #5
The Euro-Arab Foundation has become a member of the REDOI Network (Spanish Network against Hate Crimes and under-reporting), a national network of experts involved in the fight against hate phenomena, coordinated by ‘Está en tu mano’, a funded project by the European Commission’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and the Spanish Directorate General for Humanitarian Attention and Social Inclusion of Immigration.
This network aims to prevent hate crimes and hate speech through a multi-agency cooperation approach, creating synergies, data sharing, and possible research collaborations at a national and European level.
Researcher Lucía García del Moral Martín is to represent the Foundation in the Third Sector Correspondent in Granada [Corresponsalía del Tercer Sector en Granada].
Access to REDOI’s website
As a part of the STAND-UP Project, an EU Policy Paper on EU-level recommendations on supporting multi-agency cooperation in countering hate crime, considering that integration of technological tools has emerged as a pivotal aspect of the collective response, was delivered.
The policy recommendations proposed under the project adopt a multi-stakeholder approach, emphasizing the importance of collaboration among public and private parties, including law enforcement agencies, criminal justice, other national institutions, such as National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), policymakers, and the broader community.
In the digital age, technology plays a dual role in the perpetuation and prevention of hate crime
This paper incorporates the extensive work accomplished over the past two years through the STAND-UP Project; it overviews how to enhance multi-agency cooperation at the national and EU level through the participation of a wide variety of stakeholders, moving beyond the EU High-Level Group proposed “structured” cooperation between LEAs and CSOs
In this way, a future strategic document by the European Union is anticipated to outline a comprehensive approach specifically targeting the issue of hate crime and hate phenomena, both in the physical world and online. This prospective document, in response to the evolving and increasing challenges of hate-based incidents, is expected to detail forward-looking steps which will aim to ensure robust monitoring, establish fair and efficient legal procedures, and develop a sustainable system capable of responding to emerging trends in hate crime and online hate speech and of tackling discrimination and human rights violations.
EU Policy Paper Deliverable D6.3.
EU-level policy recommendations on supporting multi-agency cooperation in countering hate crime, including through the use of technologies.
Authors: Anastasia Chalkia, Eva Tzavala and Katerina Charokopou, (GNCHR)
Contributors: Viviana Gullo (Agenfor)
After a two-year multi-agency work bringing discrimination, intolerance, and hatred into focus, the European project STAND-UP has come to an end. The closure event, the seminar Stand Together Against Hate: A Multi-Agency Initiative was held in Brussels, on the 11th of January, with an introductive part of the project conducted by Giovanni Gasparani, Prosecutor office of Venice, and the keynote speech of Magdalena Adamowicz, member of the European Parliament for the European People’s Party whose husband, the Polish politician Paweł Adamowicz, was assassinated by an extremist in which is considered a hate crime.
The morning session included the roundtable Navigating the Intersection of Hate Speech and Crimes with Menno Ettema, Programme Manager and Co-Secretary to expert Committee on Combating Hate Speech, to expert Committee on Combating Hate Speech; Nataša Vučković (via online), member of the Center for Democracy Foundation (CDF); Sergio Bianchi (online), expert of the Group on Combating Anti-Muslim hatred and discrimination in the EU; and finally Simonetta Moro (online) from the Municipality of Bologna.
One of the main outputs of STAND-UP project, the EU Policy Paper: ‘EU-Level Policy Recommendations on Supporting Multi-Agency Cooperation in Countering Hate Crime, Including Through the Use of Technologies‘ elaborated by GNCHR, was presented during the morning session by GNCHR representatives Eva Tzavala, Coordinator of the Scientific Unit, and Dr. Anastasia Chalkia, Human Rights Officer.
The six European project partners shared the afternoon session’s panels on interagency cooperation to tackle hate crimes and hate speech, as well as local pilot success stories and results developed in Veneto, Athens, Andalusia, and Trentino-Alto Adige. The first included the participation of Akis Karatrandos, Research Fellow at ELIAMEP and Senior Advisor at KEMEA; Katerina Charokopou, Legal Officer at GNCHR; Viviana Gullo, Project Manager of Agenfor; FUNDEA’s Research Fellow, Lucía García del Moral, and of Prof. Artinopoulou (EPLO) as a moderator. On its side, the second panel entailed the interventions of Clara Raffaele Addamo, lawyer, Prosecutor office of Trento; Viviana Gullo, Agenfor’s Project Manager; Katerina Charokopou, Legal Officer of GNCHR; Giovanni Gasparini, Prosecutor Office of Venice; Prof. Artinopoulou, Director of the Institute on Crime & Criminal Justice (EPLO); Maryna Manchenko, from CESIE; and Viviana Gullo, Agenfor’s Project Manager, as a moderator.
Implementing the STAND-UP multi-agency model to stop hate crimes
During its implementation period, between January 2022 and January 2024, the STAND-UP project held several activities, among them an exclusive webinar addressing hate crime in the digital era or regional courses in Italy and Greece to improve competence and technological skills to combat hate phenomena, using technologies such as Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) to monitor hate speech, along with Virtual Reality simulations and the STAND-UP model based on a victim-centered approach. The courses were focused on multi-agency cooperation, hate phenomena, and national and European legislation, and were addressed to members of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), Public Authorities (judiciaries, ministries, prosecutors), or associations or communities affected by hate crime or hate speech.
An anonymous form to denounce hate crimes was created and a six-month pilot was run with the implementation of OSINT-monitoring centers that generate alerts and reports when online traffic concerning hateful sentiment toward a given at-risk group surpasses average levels, based on the semantic bank for hateful sentiment and identified at-risk groups. The pilot compared levels of hateful content online with incidents of hate crime to understand the extent to which the two are reflective of each other and, thus, explore how rising tensions or growing hateful sentiment towards a given group can be the trigger for preventive action. This pilot also implemented the Blueprint for Cooperation, using a platform to share information and a model of granular access and trialing the model memoria of understanding, as well as the Victim Support Handbook for effective but sensitive investigations and prosecutions.
A Victim Support Handbook
To boost the victim-centered approach, something crucial to make victims feel safe, to openly speak of their experience and to seek help and advice, the STAND-UP project made public its Victim Support Handbook (download here) that exposes the terminology and a synthesis of the STAND-UP project and the technology tool OSIN used. It provides context on hate-crime victims’ rights within the EU, defining who are hate crime victims, types of hate speeches and crimes and their impact, as well as a victim-centered approach to support; it establishes the role of CSOs and prosecutors, the legal framework and good practices in Italy, Greece, and Spain, and it concludes with a toolkit for analyzing a particular case of hate speech.
The Handbook is a significant tool that aims at the sustainability of support service providers like the CSOs (Civil Society Organizations), the most relevant actors in the victim support systems, and that puts on the table the importance of partnerships with the public sector, able to establish national funds.
Brussels, 11 January 2024.- The closure event of the European STAND-UP project, the seminar “Stand Together Against Hate: A Multi-Agency Initiative”, has taken place this Thursday in the Residence Palace, Brussels, with the intervention of experts on hate speech crime, and the handout of the Victim Support Handbook as an efficient tool to hate monitoring and reporting. The morning session also included the presentation of the EU policy recommendations on supporting multi-agency cooperation in countering hate crime, making a special mention of the use of technologies for this purpose.
The seminar presented the results of various training programmes in different countries included in the project, creating an environment for in-depth discussions and exchanges. Experts such as Menno Ettema, Magdalena Adamowicz, Nataša Vučković, Akis Karatrandos will spoke on the topic of hate speech crime.
The six European project’s partners – National Commission for Human Rights (Greece), Euro-Arab Foundation (Spain), European Public Law Organization (Greece), Agenfor International Foundation (Italy), and European Association for Local Democracy (France), under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Ordinary Court of Trento (Italy) – have shared the afternoon session’s panels on interagency cooperation to tackle hate crimes and hate speech, as well as local pilot success stories and results developed in Veneto, Athens, Andalusia and Trentino-Alto Adige.
The STAND-UP project, co-funded with 748,780.66 euros by the European Commission Directorate General for Justice and Consumers, has taken place from January 2022 and January 2024 and it has focused on public authorities and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)’ responsibilities and relationships with victims. It has enhanced multi-agency cooperation by establishing harmonized definitions of hate crime, embedded within a blueprint framework for cooperation, and it standardizes reporting procedures through the co-design and validation of reporting forms for law enforcement agencies, and CSOs/NGOs. STAND-UP has deepened the relevant actors’ point of view of hate speech and hate crime, including the sentiments behind them on a local level.