United against hate crime
Spanish Social Action NGOs platform publishes the conclusions on the International Conference against hate speech and hate crime held in Madrid on the 27th November 2014.
11.02.2015
The conclusions on this conference, organised by the Spanish Social Action NGOs platform in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, and the Norwegian Embassy in Spain, with the support of the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism 2009/2014, has shown the need to review the partnerships between governments, civil society and international agencies in the fight against hate speech and hate crime. Preventing, raising awareness and prosecuting those crimes must be a joint priority.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the Council of Europe (CoE) have agreed on the need to stress that this is a cross-border growing phenomenon against which we must unite efforts and work through public awareness campaigns, but also developing strategies to measure the phenomenon and protect victims.
The justice system in Spain wishes for the collaboration of NGOs to obtain specific results, such as the improvement of the criminalisation of those behaviours considered as hate crime and the development of action protocols, as they need to be put into context, something NGOs are able to do. All of this will lead to the protection of victims, allowing for those crimes to be reported and improving the justice system's efficacy.
The experience shown by NGOs in Spain demonstrate that the priority must be the protection of victims, combined with more demanding and proactive actions in order to be more efficient when prosecuting crimes, as victims are in many cases invisible. Hate speech on the internet and sanctioning it require putting it into context, something provided by the knowledge and street proximity of NGOs.