The Council of Europe Office in Georgia organised an online seminar on hate crime data analysis for partner institutions to discuss the methodology of data analysis and the best examples of cooperation between government institutions, civil society and researchers. Together with the invited speakers and international experts in this field, the online seminar also touched upon the contribution research can make to analysing and understanding police and criminal justice data on hate crime for development of policy and practice. The experts shared example of other European countries on how data collected by NGO’s can be complimentary to data collected by the institutions, , and such official data can be shared with NGOs and communities in order to improve knowledge of public authority responses and contribute to strengthening these essential relationships.
The online seminar gathered representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Office of the General Prosecutor, Court, Universities and Coalition for Equality.
This is one of a series of activities aimed at improving the methodology of data collection and its analysis. Since September 2018, the Council of Europe Office in Georgia, in the framework of the co-operation project “Fight against discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech in Georgia” has been assisting stakeholders to improve hate crime data collection methodology. As a result of an inclusive process, recommendations regarding the new data collection methodology, specific guidelines and data collection templates on hate crime, discrimination and hate speech in line with ECRI recommendations and current needs were developed. In 2020 the memorandum on cooperation on the collection of data on hate crime was signed between the Supreme Court, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the National Statistics Office of Georgia. The working method to improve hate crime data collection involved interested state and non-state actors who contributed to the process.
This process is supported by the Council of Europe co-operation Project “Fight against Discrimination, Hate Crimes and Hate Speech in Georgia”. The project is implemented under the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023 with the support of the Danish Neighbourhood Programme in Georgia (DANEP).
