The General Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the National Statistics Office of Georgia with the support of the Council of Europe Office in Georgia organised the presentation of the joint data collection on hate crimes.

This data collection is based on a new joint methodology which was agreed between the Supreme Court, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the National Statistics Office of Georgia , in a signed memorandum co-ordinated by the Council of Europe.

The online presentation was opened by Vahagn Muradyan, Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Georgia, Natia Merebashvili, Deputy General Prosecutor and Aleksandre Darakhvelidze, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. The representatives of government institutions, international and non-governmental organisations attended the presentation.  

The importance of joint data collection in the fight against hate crimes and its publication was discussed at the meeting. A statistical report on the hate crimes covering the period of 1 October - 31 December 2020 has been published in a pilot mode on the website of the National Statistics Office of Georgia.

The memorandum on co-operation on data collection on hate crimes and disaggregated data in Georgian and English are publicly available to all interested parties on the website of  the National Statistics Office of Georgia.  

Since September 2018, the Council of Europe Office in Georgia, in the framework of the co-operation project “Fight against discrimination, hate crimes and hate speech in Georgia” has been assisting stakeholders to improve hate crime data collection methodology. As a result of an inclusive process, recommendations regarding the new data collection methodology, specific guidelines and data collection templates on hate crime, discrimination and hate speech in line with ECRI recommendations and current needs were developed. In 2020 the memorandum on cooperation on the collection of data on hate crime was signed between the Supreme Court, the Office of the General Prosecutor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the National Statistics Office of Georgia. The working method to improve hate crime data collection involved interested state and non-state actors who contributed to the process.

This process is supported by the Council of Europe co-operation Project “Fight against Discrimination, Hate Crimes and Hate Speech in Georgia”. The project is implemented under the Council of Europe’s Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023 with the support of the Danish Neighbourhood Programme in Georgia (DANEP).