The capacity building for court representatives who came from east and south parts of Georgia took place on 30-31 May 2023 in Borjomi as part of a series of recuring trainings (February 2023,  July 2022, October 2021, July 2021, December 2019 and others). The participants learned about the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the respective case law on discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech including relevant data collection.

This training also focused on the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, the importance and obligation of producing joint data on hate crimes, manifestations of discrimination, and the scope of the negative and positive obligation of the state based on the case law of the Court.

The training participants were provided with an opportunity to gain further knowledge on correctly completing the special forms for recording and accurately documenting hate crime data.

This series of trainings on hate crime data collection contributes to making steps forward for improving hate crime data collection methodology in Georgia.

In line with ECRI recommendations and ECHR judgements and respective Committee of Ministers decisions, Georgia needs to further improve protection from and response to hate motivated crimes and respective data collection and analysis. Since September 2018, the Council of Europe Office in Georgia continuously works with law-enforcement and justice system to promote advancement of countering hate motivated crimes and improving hate crime data collection methodology. Various training activities and working meetings were organised by the Council of Europe to support the process.

This activity is implemented in the framework of the Project “Promoting the Effective Protection of Equality and Non-Discrimination in Georgia”. The Project is funded through the Council of Europe Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023