Facing Facts 2.0 | Facing Facts!
Brussels 20 January – Facing Facts!, a Europe-wide project led by an international consortium of partners, is launching a new phase in its work to empower civil society organisations in combatting hate crime in Europe. The work, led by CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, comes in response to rising hate crimes in the EU and a lack of systematic analysis and approach to confronting hate crimes. Most Member States have not transposed EU decisions on racism and xenophobia into national law. (1) Building on the successes of the original research, practical guidelines and a unique training programme, 2014 will see several new initiatives from Facing Facts!
Facing Facts!, the European project aiming to empower Civil Society Organisations to collect data on hate crimes through training, is launching several new initiatives in early 2014: a new train-the-trainer seminar on monitoring hate crimes, an international conference with transnational agencies and a new survey designed to capture the current methodologies and practices of hate crime monitoring training by organisations committed to giving greater visibility to the daily issue of hate crime. These are just a few examples of the activities that will put Facing Facts! once again at the forefront of the battle against the alarming underreporting of hate crimes in Europe.
After having gained extraordinary recognition at both the international and national levels (2) , Facing Facts! is keen to boost the multiplier effect generated by the first train-the-trainer seminar by enlarging the pool of trainers across Europe with a new seminar to be held in Budapest, in March 2014. The higher the number of Facing Facts! trainers, the higher the number of opportunities for local training initiatives to be implemented and hate crimes to be better recorded.
Facing Facts! continues to work toward the realization of the important objective of improving solidarity between different social groups through an innovative training methodology which has embedded anti-discrimination teachings and principles. Thus we found it significant to schedule the Facing Facts! conference with Transnational agencies aiming to aid in creating ways to facilitate the work of Civil Society Organisations on the 21st of March 2014, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
This new phase will hopefully see an increase in organisational partners in the project as well as more countries and community groups involved in the project’s initiatives. With the Guidelines on monitoring hate crime translated in two more languages, Italian and Greek, and with the main activities held in Hungary, the project seeks to make the difference in those European countries where the rise of xenophobic violence represent a threat for the democratic values of Europe as whole.
Survey on hate crime monitoring training Submitting a questionnaire means your organisation will be able to benefit from our research and your work will become more visible to transnational agencies: complete your questionnaire.
(1) Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, OJ 2008 L 328, p. 55. By November 2010, the Council of the European Union’s Framework Decision on Racism and Xenophobia should have been transposed in Member States’ national laws. According to information collected by the Fundamental Rights Agency, at the beginning of September 2010 five EU Member States had taken measures to transpose the framework decision.