6  •  Overview To help counter hate crime and foster freedom of religion or belief in the country, ODIHR delivered a series of workshops designed to strengthen the ability of Ukrainian police to identify and investigate hate crimes. In December, ODIHR adapted its Understanding Hate Crimes handbook to the context of Ukraine and made it available in Ukrainian, Russian and English. Following ODIHR’s Contact Point for Roma and Sinti Issues continual advocacy of policies to address the challenges faced by Roma in the areas of education, employment, housing and policing in Ukraine and a major round-table in November on promoting Roma inclusion in Ukraine, the country established a working group to implement a strategy to protect and integrate the Roma national minority there. This year, the election observation mission to Ukraine’s local elections marked the 300 th mission ODIHR has deployed since its creation nearly 25 years ago. Our election observation missions continue to be one of the most visible activities of the Office. The findings and recommendations of election observation reports provide a valuable resource for the Office’s other programmes, and provide all OSCE participating States concrete steps to strengthening key aspects of democratic elections. Our election observation activities covered 17 countries during 2015. In follow up to ODIHR reports, a number of states have taken welcome initiatives to hold inclusive and comprehensive electoral review events and invited ODIHR for consultations on planned Michael Georg Link (r), Director of ODIHR, and Valeriya Lutkovska (l), Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner, signing an agreement to enhance co-operation between ODIHR and Lutkovska’s office in a broad range of human rights activities in Ukraine. Warsaw, 3 June 2015. OSCE/Agnieszka Rembowska reforms or on specific electoral issues. The ultimate goal of election observation is the improvement of election legislation and practice, introduced by government authorities, as a result of observers’ work and post-electoral engagement. The Office also held a roundtable on electoral dispute resolution, attended by representatives of 35 countries across the OSCE. Restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly continued to be applied in some participating States. As part of its third cycle of assembly monitoring, in 2015 ODIHR observed assemblies in five participating States. Likewise, ODIHR continued to monitor states’ responses to terrorism in 2015, and the impacts on human rights, including the freedoms of expression, religion or belief, assembly and association and the right to privacy. In November, ODIHR published its report on the Human Rights Situation of Detainees at Guantanamo, a comprehensive assessment of human rights violations in the detention facility. This year, the Office maintained its efforts to address hate crime and other forms of intolerance, particularly through close work with civil society, both building coalitions to help foster tolerance and in partnership to collect comprehensive hate crime data. ODIHR’s hate crime reporting this year included information provided by 43 OSCE participating States. ODIHR also continues to work closely with law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors to assist them in identifying, investigating and successfully prosecuting hate crimes.