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Understanding Hate Crimes

Description

This booklet aims to help police and prosecutors, legislators, local authorities and civil society organisations better understand the problem of hate crimes. It explains the significance of hate crimes and suggests how authorities and communities can prevent and better respond to hate crimes.

Summary

Hate crimes are crimes based on prejudice. They happen everywhere; no society is immune to the effects of prejudice and intolerance. Individual hate crimes carry the seeds of potential conflicts, as they can escalate both in terms of numbers and levels of violence. If this is understood and firm measures taken, the cycle of violence can be stopped.

This booklet aims to help police and prosecutors, legislators, local authorities and civil society organisations better understand the problem of hate crimes. It explains the significance of hate crimes and suggests how authorities and communities can prevent and better respond to hate crimes. National hate crime laws have been updated according to the amendments to the Criminal Code in February 2014 (Official Gazette no. 27/2014).

This booklet has been prepared by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in conjunction with the OSCE Mission to Skopje. It is not a comprehensive guide to hate crimes. For those seeking further information, ODIHR’s Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Information System (http://tandis.odihr.pl/) offers a number of tools and specialized guides in various languages