The Council of Europe has long worked to raise awareness of targeted violence including racist, religious, gender based, and anti-LGBTI crimes. The police are at the frontline of the criminal justice system and the first point of contact for many victims of hate crime.

In 2025, the SOGIESC Unit has updated the manual Policing Hate Crime against LGBTI persons: Training for a Professional Police Response intended for police trainers, investigators, managers, hate crime officers and frontline police officers working in countries across the Council of Europe region. Its purpose is to provide assistance, information and the appropriate tools for conducting trainings on hate crime against LGBTI persons for law enforcement personnel to develop essential skills to efficiently identify and investigate hate crimes against LGBTI persons. Without these skills, the police cannot ensure protection and justice for all victims, gain the trust of LGBTI communities or contribute to the fair and transparent application of national hate crime laws.

The manual builds on Council of Europe standards, especially on the European Convention on Human Rights and the relevant case law from the European Court of Human Rights, as well as other international human rights standards and already existing training materials for law enforcement officials. 

This manual was updated (from the 2017 original) in the framework of the EU/CoE joint project “Combating anti-LGBTIQ violence and hate speech and strengthening awareness raising and factbased narratives about LGBTIQ persons”.

This webpage was produced with the financial support of the European Union and the Council of Europe. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the author(s). Views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union or the Council of Europe.