Anti-Muslim hate crimes were a topic of discussion at a workshop in the capital of Poland

On 5^th and 6^th of December this year was held a consultative workshop of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of OSCE (ODIHR) with the civil society and NGOs from the region of the Organization working on anti-Muslim hate crimes and intolerance. The theme of the meeting was “Good practices and lessons learnt in the monitoring, registration and reporting of anti-Muslim hate crimes”.

The workshop brought together the civil organization with experience which currently are carrying out monitoring and reporting of anti-Muslim hate crimes and incidents, as well as other that are less experienced or do not have sufficient experience. A representative of the Muslim Denomination in Bulgaria at the meeting was Hayri Emin from the International Department of Grand Mufti’s Office. He presented the activities of the Denomination on this field. The participants in the working meeting presented their activities and the challenges that they face in collecting and reporting the cases. And the number of the participating States in the Organization that submit the official reports on anti-Muslim hate crimes is still very small.

The meeting in Poland was also attended by several regional initiatives that monitor, collect and report cases of Islamophobia. ODIHR collects and publishes information for the participating States, inter-governmental agencies and the civil society from year 2006 year onwards. The overall analysis of the reporting shows that there still exists practice of not reporting the cases in the field of anti-Muslim hate crimes the reasons for which are very different.

Several decisions of the Ministerial Council such as that from Athens (CM December 9/09) highlight the importance of the governmental responses to hate crimes. ODIHR is charged with the development of the capacity of the civil society for achieving successes in monitoring and reporting of hate incidents and for supporting the victims of hate crimes (CM Dec. 13/06, Brussels) as well as for promotion of the best practices and their dissemination (MC December 4/03, Maastricht).