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OSCE/ODIHR hosts confidence and capacity-building event in Kyiv to pave the way forward in addressing hate crime in Ukraine

26 April 2016
Participants at ODIHR-organized Second National Confidence and Capacity Building event in Kyiv, 26 April 2016 (OSCE/Andriy Muzychenko) Photo details

Practices of monitoring, reporting and investigating hate crimes in Ukraine were the focus of the Second National Confidence and Capacity Building event, organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Kyiv on 26 April 2016.

Participants from government and civil society discussed the root causes of under-reporting of hate crime and ways to develop more positive relations between the authorities and civil society. They were joined by civil society representatives that shared experiences from the Czech Republic and Poland.

"Bringing together civil society activists and officials from the criminal justice sector for regular confidence-building meetings is an important and practical step that demonstrates a serious commitment to promptly investigate and punish hate crimes," said Christina Sell, ODIHR Adviser on Civil Society Relations.

Commenting on the need for strong collaboration between civil society and law-enforcement agencies, Oksana Panchuk, a senior investigator with the Ukrainian National Police, added: "In order to counter hate crime, we need to go beyond data collection and take practical steps to ensure such crimes are properly investigated."

Olexandr Zinchenkov, Monitoring and Legal Expert with the Ukrainian LGBT Human Rights Center Nash Mir, said: "One of the most effective ways to motivate targeted groups to report hate crimes is to clearly demonstrate the government’s willingness to investigate these cases thoroughly and without prejudice."

As a practical follow-up to previous training activities to strengthen the capacity of civil society to address hate crime, ODIHR has allocated funding to five civil society projects, to be implemented this year, addressing bias-motivated violence at the community level.

This event was organized as part of ODIHR’s project, “Strengthening dialogue among civil society and with key government stakeholders in Ukraine on human dimension issues,” complementing the recently completed cycle of training events held in Kharkiv, Lviv and Kyiv.