TOLERANCE AND NON-DISCRIMINATION // 49
Addressing racism and xenophobia
Racial abuse and violence in public places, restrictions on movement
due to overzealous policing, and hate
crimes are regularly experienced by
communities across the OSCE region,
as are unequal access to education,
employment and healthcare. All of
these topics were discussed by activists from across the OSCE region at an
event on the margins of the annual
Human Dimension Implementation
Meeting, in Warsaw, in September.
Interlocutors exchanged their experiences of racism and xenophobia
and scrutinized them to see how they
impacted specific communities. Participants also discussed best practices and measures that can be taken to
counter intolerance against people of
African descent in the OSCE region,
and how to ensure their involvement
in ODIHR’s activities.
Countering anti-Semitism
ODIHR’s efforts to counter anti-Semitism were marked by continued
work on the “Turning Words Into
Action to Address Anti-Semitism”
project, which focuses on three specific areas: security, education and
coalition-building.
Security
ODIHR published the guide Understanding Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes
and Addressing the Security Needs
of Jewish Communities, in English,
French, German and Italian. The
guide supports OSCE participating States in their efforts to address
the security needs of Jewish communities and improve how states
respond to anti-Semitic hate
crimes. ODIHR has begun work on
customized guides for application
in France, Bulgaria and Greece.
Additionally, an online platform to
help civil society groups monitor
and report on hate crimes, including anti-Semitic incidents, was
developed in 2017 and will be piloted in 2018.
Education
ODIHR also continued to develop education policy guidelines on anti-Semitism, following expert group meetings
in Paris and Warsaw. These guidelines
will support policymakers by providing them with clear steps to address
anti-Semitism in their countries by
improving citizens’ level of education
on the topic. Simultaneously, ODIHR
has been working on a series of tools
for teachers and teacher training institutes on anti-Semitism, and has also
developed a report that collates all
of the challenges to discussing these
issues that were encountered in the
course of the research. Based on the
challenges identified, ODIHR began
to develop teacher training guides.
These efforts were complemented by a
roundtable discussion on the importance of using education to resist
anti-Semitism in Moldova, which was
co-organized with the OSCE Mission
to Moldova.
Coalition-building
The effectiveness of civil society in
promoting tolerance can be strengthened by building more robust connections between different groups
and communities in society. To this
end, ODIHR began preparing a new
manual that will serve as a capacity-building tool to create successful
and sustainable coalitions to work
together to address intolerance and
discrimination.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHT
Understanding Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes
and Addressing the Security Needs of Jewish
Communities. ODIHR’s publication lays out practical
steps that governments can take to address the
security needs of Jewish communities in co-operation
and partnership with these same communities.
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