TOLERANCE AND NON-DISCRIMINATION    31 ACTIVITIES STRONGLY AND EFFECTIVELY COUNTERING HATE CRIME ODIHR pursued its reporting and capacity-building efforts by publishing hate crime data to help improve understanding of the hate crime situation in the OSCE region. The Office also works to improve governments’ efforts to counter hate crimes by strengthening criminal justice responses, improving assistance provided to hate crime victims and providing support to governments in improving their hate crime data collection mechanisms. Reporting hate crimes across the OSCE region Marking the International Day for Tolerance, ODIHR published hate crime data for 2015 on 16 November 2016. Forty-one participating States submitted information for the year. Of these, 17 provided detailed police statistics according to ODIHR’s bias motivations. The Office also presented information from 118 civil society groups about incidents in 42 countries. This information was supplemented by data submitted by OSCE field operations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration. Although the general level of reporting to ODIHR was comparable to previous years, limited data on some bias motivations continued to indicate under-reporting and gaps in recording, notably in the case of hate crimes against people with disabilities and against Roma and Sinti. To help address these gaps, ODIHR focused research on geographic areas for which the Office does not have data and co-operated with OSCE field operations. ODIHR also works closely with the network of National Points of Contact on hate crime, which met in Warsaw on 16 and 17 November. Working with law enforcement and prosecutors Co-operation with law-enforcement personnel and prosecutors through the Training against Hate Crimes for Law Enforcement (TAHCLE) and Prosecutors and Hate Crime Training (PAHCT) programmes are at the centre of ODIHR’s capacity-building efforts. Building on the experience acquired in implementing TAHCLE and PAHCT, ODIHR began updating the programmes to strengthen their monitoring and evaluation components. In 2016, ODIHR considerably expanded the number of participating States implementing TAHCLE, signing memoranda of understanding with Finland, Iceland and Turkey. Police forces in Finland, Iceland and Malta are expected to begin implementing TAHCLE in 2017, following field assessment visits that involved consultations with government officials and civil society actors. Hate crime training was organized for law-enforcement personnel from Turkey, Romania and the city of Valencia, Spain, and Maltese police officers benefitted from an awareness-raising workshop. Promoting a comprehensive approach to addressing hate crimes, ODIHR delivered a hate crime workshop for Icelandic criminal justice system Larry Olomofe, ODIHR’s Adviser on Combating Racism and Xenophobia, presenting at a youth workshop in Warsaw, 26 September 2016. (OSCE/Agnieszka Rembowska)