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PROJECT BACKGROUND
Discrimination, intolerance and hatred are still present in European societies, often leading to serious and violent crimes. These practices and feelings are largely causes of broader social tensions and have long-lasting repercussions on victims, their families and on our societies. However, there are deficiencies at the European level in the management of hate crimes and discrimination against people or communities based on gender, race, sexuality or other aspects, as well as in the response given by the public authorities of European countries. All the elements of, and actors responsible for, countering hate crime must be addressed cooperate within one coordinated framework.
Starting date:
January 1st, 2022
Closing date:
January 1st, 2024
About Stand-Up Project
STAND-UP aims to establish a public authority-led, multi-agency model for countering hate crime. The model, designed and verified through participatory design process and a 6-month piloting period, comprises:
- Technological instruments to enhance monitoring of the phenomenon and inter-agency data exchange,
- A co-designed standardised definition of hate crime,
- Two compatible models for hate crime reporting (for law enforcement (LEAs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) respectively), and
- a multi-agency handbook for victim support.
Training activities target public authorities (law enforcement and judicial bodies in particular), as well as CSOs, with the aim of 01
Ensuring that relevant actors are able to implement the tools and mechanisms developed within the project and
02
Better harmonising public body and CSO activities.
Virtual Reality case simulations support training on sensitive questioning at investigation and prosecution.
From a methodological perspective, STAND-UP strives to create a comprehensive and holistic counter-hate crime framework that covers all components of counter-hate process (reporting-investigating-prosecution-prevention (RIPP), embedded within a framework of victim support. In this way, the project ensures the complementarity of the work of different actors, leading to a streamlined and more efficient RIPP cycle, better victim support, and higher levels of trust between CSOs, law enforcement, judiciary, and victims.
Open Source INTelligence (OSINT) is used to understand hateful sentiments and speech in localised contacts, helping public authorities and CSOs to identify areas of intervention, at-risk groups, and the weight of hateful sentiments expressed online as an indicator of physical acts of hate offline, all multi-factorally disaggregated. We will develop a platform for interagency data exchange and carry out activities to raise awareness of STAND-UP and its outcomes, and to heighten awareness of hate crime and its impact on victims.
Needs addressed
by the STAND-UP project:
Need 1:
Strengthened cooperation between CSOs, law enforcement, and judicial actors.
Tackling hate crime involves enhanced reporting, investigation, prosecution, and prevention (RIPP), and parallel victim support, necessitating the involvement of a range of public and civil society actors. The division of responsibilities and competencies of the actors is essential in terms of trustful relationships with victims and methods or instruments that can be employed. Careful coordination of these separate activities must be conducted in order to ensure their complementarity and the comparability of data gathered, and to support investigation, prosecution and reporting through mechanisms such as third-party-reporting.
Need 2:
Improved reporting procedures,
As where hate crimes (“the most sever expression of discrimination”) are not reported, their victims are left without redress and perpetrators never brought to justice. Accurate reporting is also essential in ensuring the scale and urgency of the issue is understood and sufficient resources are dedicated to tackling it. A range of elements currently complicate the reporting of hate crimes and incidents of discrimination, including a lack of a standardised definition of hate crimes across relevant bodies in each Member State, a reluctance on the part of victims to report hate crimes, and inadequate data sharing between CSOs and law enforcement.
Need 3:
Strengthen Victim Support
Adequate victim support is a matter of ensuring, protecting, and enforcing their rights as per the Victims’ Rights Directive. Victim support is also essential in building trust between relevant agencies and victims, which must be enhanced in order to boost reporting rates and contribute to more effective investigations, prosecutions, and long-term prevention. Here, communication and cooperation between public authorities and CSOs is critical owing to the nature of the relationships between CSOs and victims, as well as CSOs and minority groups more vulnerable to hate crime, which is a large asset in encouraging reporting on the part of victims.
Need 4:
Enhanced practitioner training
Specific to the different aspects of combating hate crime, including on reporting, investigating, and prosecuting, as well as on victim assistance and inter-agency cooperation.
Objectives:
Enhance multi-agency cooperation in countering hate crime by establishing harmonised definitions of hate crime, embedded within a blueprint framework for cooperation.
Standardise reporting procedures through the co-design and validation of a reporting forms for 1. law enforcement agencies and 2. CSOs/NGOs.
Deepen relevant actors’ understanding of the phenomena of hate speech and hate crime, including the sentiments behind them on a local level through enhanced monitoring tools and skills. STAND-UP employs open-source intelligence-led monitoring mechanisms, piloted in two separate Italian municipalities.
Strengthen victim support through awareness and skills on “sensitive investigation” and prosecution through which “victims are recognised and treated in a respectful, sensitive, tailored, professional and non-discriminatory manner” (Art 1.1 of the Victims’ Rights Directive), focusing on unbiased reporting and investigation procedures and LEA-CSO support networks, strengthening Art 8. of the same.
Design and implement training for CSOs, LEAs, and prosecutors and judges on reporting, investigating, prosecuting, and preventing (RIPP) hate crimes and discrimination, with parallel victim support.
Work PackageS:
Work Package 1:
Management & Coordination
Management & Coordination
Work Package 2:
Hate monitoring mechanisms
Hate monitoring mechanisms
Work Package 3:
Multi-agency cooperation
Multi-agency cooperation
Work Package 4:
Capacity Building
Capacity Building
Work Package 5:
STAND-UP Pilot
STAND-UP Pilot
Work Package 6:
Dissemination & Communication
Dissemination & Communication
Project Coordinator:
Procura della Repubblica di Trento
Italy
The Public Prosecutor’s Office is located at the Court, i.e. at the first instance judge competent to rule on most civil or criminal matters.
The public prosecutor’s office is headed by the public prosecutor, assisted by deputy public prosecutors. Together, these magistrates perform the functions of the Public Prosecutor in criminal cases and, when required by law, in civil cases. The Public Prosecutor’s Office is called upon to protect the rights of the community and of individuals, acting impartially and independently in accordance with the Constitution, international standards applicable in our State and state and local laws.
The main tasks of the Public Prosecutor’s Office are set out in Article 73 of Royal Decree No. 12 of 30 January 1941 on the Judicial Order.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office also performs tasks of an administrative nature, the main one being the certification service in relations with the general public.
This involves the issuing of certificates which, in various situations of daily life, are requested from citizens in order to obtain a job, to register on a professional roll, to certify the existence or otherwise of criminal convictions for the persons concerned (criminal certificates) or the pending of criminal proceedings for which no final sentence has been passed (certificates of pending charges).
PARTNERS:
The prosecution office of Venice
Italy
The Public Prosecutor’s Office carries out a series of important heterogeneous activities, briefly listed in the art. 73 of the Royal Decree of 30 January 1941, n. 12 (Judicial system), a text of law which generally governs the organization of the judiciary and describes its different functions. In particular, the general attributions of the Public Prosecutor, i.e. of the Magistrates who, as a whole, make up the Public Prosecutor’s Office, are the following:
- Repression of crimes;
- Supervision of the observance of the laws and the prompt and regular administration of justice;
· Protection of the rights of the state, legal persons and incapable persons;
· Execution of the judged in criminal matters.
The Judicial Police section assists the Prosecutor in carrying out the investigative activity, then carries out inspections, interrogations and whatever is necessary to collect useful evidence to identify the perpetrator of a crime. The tasks of the Judicial Police are listed in articles 55-59 of the Code of Criminal Procedure:
- Investigations, following reports or on their own initiative;
· Repression of illegal activities, such as arrest in the act of crime;
· Execution of the acts and commands of the prosecutor or the judge.
The Judicial Police is set up at every Public Prosecutor’s Office on the Italian territory. It is not a separate body, but rather it is made up of officers and agents from the State Police and the Carabinieri and other bodies that are available to the judicial authority for the execution of investigation.
Fundación Euroárabe de Altos Estudios
Spain
The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies is a public institution with a unique composition and mission. Located in Granada (Spain) and ruled by a joint Board of Trustees chaired by the Secretary General for Universities. The Board of Trustees is further composed by two representatives from the University of Granada, two from the Ministry of Education and from the Government of Andalusia. The Euro-Arab Foundation works within the fields of cooperation, training and research. FUNDEA aims to create a space for dialogue and cooperation between the countries of the European Union and Arab countries. The Foundation was entrusted with promoting cultural, scientific and economic relations between Europe and the Arab World, throughout the spread of scientific and humanistic knowledge produced in universities and other centres for scientific research or artistic creation, either national or international, in order to contribute to the reinforcement of the dialogue between Arab States and European States.
For that purpose, the Foundation’s work is focused on the promotion of studies and research as well as platforms and forums of discussion and debate. By means of collaboration agreements, the Foundation maintains relations with educational, cultural, research and economic institutions in order to strengthen ties among countries in Europe and in the Arab World.
Fondazione Agenfor International
Italy
AGENFOR is a non-profit Research Centre registered by the Italian Ministry of University, Scientific Research and Technology since 2000, and specializes in working on humanities and social sciences. The focal point for AGENFOR activities is the field of security and counterterrorism where it
conducts specialised researches, manages a number of EU and National Projects and produces news and documentaries for national and international television audiences.
AGENFOR has conducted research into policy issues since 1997, with a focus on Muslim minorities in Europe and in the Western Balkans, and non-Muslim minorities in countries with Muslim majorities. AGENFOR concentrates its activities on the examination of relation between ethnicity and national identities, religious and secular governance within State building, National and Federal identities and interrelation between agents and structures in social changes. Moreover, AGENFOR produces news and documentaries for the Italian public television (RAI), Mediaset, BBC, al-Jazeera, RSI, and many other networks.
European Public Law Organization (EPLO)
GREECE
The European Public Law Organization (EPLO) is an international organization dedicated to the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the area of Public Law and Governance, including national, comparative and European public law, human rights law including women’s and children’s rights, and the promotion of European values for a better generation of lawyers and democratic institutions worldwide.
The EPLO was established in 2007 in Athens, Greece and to this date, it has developed, organized, promoted and supported more than 250 educational, research, training, and institution building activities in more than 70 countries. The EPLO has been granted the Observer Status at the General Assembly of the United Nations, at the World Intellectual Property Organization, the ILO and IOM.The Board of Directors of the EPLO comprises 17 Member States, personalities from the EC and the Council of Europe and 72 Universities from 35 countries.
EPLO has established the Institute on Crime and Criminal Justice (ICCJ) which focuses on Rights,Criminal JusticePolicies, Criminology, Victimology, Security, Civil Society and Social issues.
Greek National Commission for Human Rights (GNCHR)
greece
The Greek National Commission for Human Rights (GNCHR) is the National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) for Greece and the independent advisory body to the Greek State in accordance with the UN Paris Principles. The GNCHR has a pluralistic and polyphonic composition, comprised currently of 43 members, which includes, among others, independent authorities, universities of law and political science, third level trade unions, NGOs, political parties and ministries. This collective composition, provides a very high level of expertise, while cultivating a unique dialogue between the various bodies of Civil Society and the State.
The GNCHR’s aim is to constantly highlight towards all State authorities the need to effectively safeguard human rights for all those living in the Greek territory. For this purpose, according to its founding law, the GNCHR’s main mission is: the constant monitoring of developments regarding human rights protection in Greece and abroad, the continuous briefing and the promotion of the relevant research; the exchange of practices at the international level with competent international organisations, such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, fellow NHRIs of other States and civil society; the formulation of policy advice on human rights issues and the raising of public awareness on the risks related to human rights violations.
The GNCHR remains particularly vigilant with regard to combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Among its various functions, the GNCHR monitors and expresses recommendations to the State for the operation of a reliable and effective system for recording incidents of discrimination, racism and intolerance, while, on a more practical approach, the GNCHR continues to actively support the Racist Violence Recording Network (RVRN), which was established in 2011 by the GNCHR and the Greek Office of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. RVRN, which currently consists of 51 NGOs and CSOs, who acknowledge and jointly pursue combating racist violence, as well as all racially motivated acts on the grounds of race, colour, religion, descent, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics and disability, remains, without a doubt, the most effective mechanism for the avoidance of underreporting of hate crime in the Country to date.
Association Des Agences de la Démocratie Locale (ALDA)
FRANCE
ALDA – European Association for Local Democracy, is a French-registered association dedicated to the promotion of good local governance and citizen participation at local level in the European Union, its neighbourhood and beyond. It is a global alliance of associations, civil society organisations and local governments supporting local democracy and active citizen engagement.
The Association works with members and partners to develop projects that support its mission to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda. During its 20 years of activity ALDA has developed more than 450 projects and reached almost 25 million citizens. Today, it is a wide and consolidated network with more than 350 members from 45 countries, 16 Local Democracy Agencies (LDAs) and 3 Operating Partners (Ops). In addition, in 2017 ALDA launched ALDA+, the benefit corporation owned by ALDA and dedicated to the provision of trainings, ad hoc consultancies and specialised services in all the fields where ALDA has been operating for more than 20 years. Indeed, ALDA+ represents the capitalisation of the experience of ALDA in the fields of local democracy, participatory processes and project-cycle management.
What we do:
To promote good governance and citizen participation at local level across Europe and beyond, ALDA carries out a wide range of actions supporting local, national and international actors in achieving their objectives in the field of European integration, decentralisation, human rights, social inclusion, sustainable development, civic initiatives and much more. ALDA works with a multistakeholder approach looking at a wide spectrum of potential resources in local communities. The Association represents a wide network of citizens and local authorities fully committed to support local democracy and empowerment of local communities through citizen participation, in Europe and beyond.