Ensuring Justice for Hate Crime Victims through Strategic Litigation

Hate crimes send a message of rejection and exclusion and have a profound impact on victims, communities and societies. Despite this, judicial protection of hate crime victims is often inadequate.

ODIHR’s webinar will promote effective and community-centred judicial outcomes through strategic litigation for hate crime victims. Leading experts and practitioners in the field will focus on the crucial role of strategic litigation in raising awareness about the impact of hate crimes on victims, establishing new individual rights for them, and broadening their access to justice. Speakers will also examine the challenges and opportunities in using strategic litigation to shape environments and conditions that improve the support available to hate crime victims.

Speakers

• Ines Bojić, Attorney-at-law in the case of Đorđević v. Croatia before the European Court of Human Rights.
• Iustina Ionescu, Attorney-at-law in the cases of M.C. and A.C. v. Romania and Association Accept and Others v. Romania before the European Court of Human Rights, team member and lawyer at ACCEPT civil society organization, author of the report on Hate Crimes and other Hate Motivated Incidents against LGBTI People in Romania.
• Susheela Math, Senior Managing Litigation Officer at Open Society Justice Initiative, co-author of Challenging Ethnic Profiling in Europe: A Guide for Campaigners and Organizers, lead of third party interventions in the case of Wa Baile v. Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights.

The webinar is organized as part of a joint initiative of ODIHR and the European Commission on Strengthening Targeted Assistance and Response Structures for Hate Crime Victims in the OSCE Region (STARS). The initiative is funded by the European Union through the “Support to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) for knowledge sharing and standard setting on hate crime including hate crime victim support” (CERV-2023-IM-CRAC/RIGH/2), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy.

Participation

To register for the event, sign up here.

Learn more about this event here.