Inter-Religious Dialogue vs. Hate Crimes
It is repeated again and again that the way to tackle hate crimes, and intolerance and discrimination in general, is through raising awareness, facilitating opportunities for dialogue and the proper integration of minorities.Today I attended a side event at the OSCE HDIM run by Century 21 outlining the actions they are taking in Georgia to try and reduce the number of religiously motivated hate crimes.
Century 21 is an NGO set up to contribute to the development of the country and runs several programmes covering several human rights dimensions: democracy and the rule of law; youth and children; consumers' rights and tolerance promotion.
One central initiative this group is taking to address the problem of religiously-motivated hate crimes is a youth network against discrimination and intolerance. The network stems from the idea that young people are society's leaders of the future and are the most vulnerable to the devastating effects of violence and intolerance. The 120 members of the network represent all of Georgia's religious groups and also represent ethnic and sexual minorities. The young people involved in the network will be used as contact points for the collection and analysis of hate crime data, which should in turn allow NGOs such as Century 21 to tackle the problem directly.
I think it's a great initiative and one which is intended to spread to other countries, starting with other ex-Soviet states. Let's hope similar initiatives are introduced all over.
posted by Becca @ 3:29 pm
2 Comments:
There was no better way to put it.
The more we inform the ignorant, the better.
Thanks for posting this info. I think that every single action, even at very local level, matters and makes a diference by the end.
Khatuna
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