TOLERANCE AND NON-DISCRIMINATION Bülent Şenay (r) and Nazila Ghanea, new members of the OSCE/ODIHR Advisory Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion, discuss the Panel’s role in providing assistance to OSCE participating Sates in meeting their commitments on this fundamental freedom, Warsaw, 18 June 2013. (OSCE/Shiv Sharma) MAIN ISSUES Hate-Motivated Crimes and Violent Manifestations of Intolerance ODIHR’s annual report Hate Crimes in the OSCE Region: Incidents and Responses once again highlighted reports of assault, theft, damage to property and murder motivated by racism, xenophobia, antiSemitism and bias against Roma and Sinti, Muslims, Christians and members of other religions. The report also shows that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and persons with disabilities are victims of hate crime. While some improvements were evident, the main challenges to assessing the scope and prevalence of hate crime continue to be underreporting by victims and the lack of consistent and comparable data collected and reported by states. Freedom of Religion or Belief In the OSCE region, religious or belief communities experience problems in fully realizing their rights. Problems include limitations of the right to manifest one’s religion or belief. In particular, the use of mandatory registration systems, as well as significant practical and legal obstacles to acquiring legal personality, continue to negatively affect the rights of a wide range of religious or belief communities. Extensive discussions continue to take place on how to protect and promote freedom of religion or belief in relationship to other rights, in particular with regards to the use and display of symbols, and practices such as circumcision and ritual slaughter. 52  /   ODIHR Annual Report 2013