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2009 Annual Police Experts Meeting on hate crimes and effective law enforcement co-operation

Description

This meeting focused on the role of police in preventing and responding to hate crimes, special investigative techniques and approaches as well as inter-agency and international co-operation.

Summary

Hate crimes not only affect the individual victim, but also affect the community to which the victim belongs. The consequences of hate crimes have the potential to reach a far larger number of people than many other crimes, and can affect community stability. Police must convey to the public that they are aware of hate crimes and are working with the community to prevent and respond to them. Working together for safer communities will do much to ensure that racist and violent crimes are prevented.

The Annual Police Expert Meeting was organised in response to Ministerial Council Decision No. 9, adopted in Bucharest in December 2001. Decision calls upon the OSCE to convene as appropriate and preferably annually, meetings of police experts from OSCE participating States and representatives of other relevant specialized international and regional organisations.

The Delegation identified and nominated experts from their national administration who are directly involved in the prevention and investigation of hate crimes to participate in the meeting.