In line with its mandate, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is tasked with collecting and publishing information and statistics on hate crime and hate incidents across the OSCE region. ODIHR’s Hate Crime Report is published on this website on 16 November each year for the previous year (e.g., the 2022 Hate Crime Report was published on 16 November 2023). The time lag is because the process of collecting, analysing and publishing the data is a year-long process and involves multiple stakeholders. Read more about ODIHR’s mandate to report hate crime data and information.

Governments, civil society groups and international organizations report hate crime data and information to ODIHR. Before publishing the data, ODIHR reviews the information to ensure that it falls within the OSCE’s definition of hate crime. 

Information submitted by States includes official data recorded by criminal justice systems alongside information about the States’ efforts to address hate crime. Official data and information are presented in the first section of each country page, under “Official data reported by States”. Data and descriptive summaries of hate incidents submitted by civil society and international organizations are presented in the third section of each country page, under “Incidents reported by civil society”.

• Read Our methodology for more information.
• Watch a video overview.

When a crime is motivated by bias, it means that the perpetrator has intentionally targeted a person because of real or perceived identity traits that the victim shares with a group of people. A perpetrator may target one or more identity traits – such as nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender – or express hostility towards these identity traits during the crime. Hate crimes can also target property associated with a group who shares an identity trait, such as a place of worship or community centre.

ODIHR reports on nine bias motivations. These categories are derived from the commitments made by OSCE participating States, as well as based on the bias motivations most frequently reported on by States. It is important to note that every State records bias motivations based on the national context, and these may not correspond with the bias motivations reported on by ODIHR.

• View all of the bias motivations we report on here.
• To better understand how bias manifests in a hate crime, read ODIHR’s collection of nine factsheets on hate crime view the incident summaries published here.

No, hate crime data submitted by States do not evidence the prevalence of hate crime and cannot be used to make comparisons between countries or bias motivations. Civil society reporting of hate incidents to ODIHR is also not comprehensive. A number of factors can explain the varying numbers of hate crimes and incidents reported for different States, including how State authorities classify and record the information (in the case of official hate crime data), and how active civil society is in monitoring specific bias motivations (in the case of incidents reported by civil society).

For more information, see Sections 2 and 3 below.

Yes, in some cases a hate incident reported by civil society to ODIHR can have more than one underlying bias motivation. For example, a victim might be targeted both because of their gender and their ethnicity.

Consequently, incidents with more than one bias motivation are presented more than once in the “Incidents reported by civil society” section of the relevant country page, including under all the relevant incident summary tables (organized by bias motivation). This also explains why the segments of the charts presenting data submitted by civil society do not always add up to the total number of incidents (see the example below).

In the data presented on this website, hate crimes refer to criminal acts as recorded and reported by national authorities. These are usually recorded by police and then processed through criminal justice systems. These figures are displayed as "Official data" on this website.

Hate incidents are those reported by civil society, international organizations and the Holy See. While these incidents might constitute hate crimes, they may not have been verified by the authorities. ODIHR reviews every hate incident reported to us to ensure that the incidents displayed on the website fall within OSCE's definition of a hate crime. These incidents are published under the heading "Incidents reported by civil society" on each country page. 

Civil society reports of hate incidents play a critical role in our hate crime reporting by complementing and contextualizing the official data. Information submitted by civil society allows for a better understanding of the impact and nature of hate crimes. In the absence of official data, civil society reports are often the only information available. This is because some incidents are only reported to civil society groups and not to the authorities, or because criminal justice systems and civil society groups apply different monitoring definitions.

We analyse hundreds of civil society reports and carefully clarify information about specific incidents or statistical data to ensure that they are accurately reported.

• View the list of civil society contributors for 2022.

Incidents that take place during ongoing hostilities may be subject to other branches of public international law, particularly international humanitarian law and international criminal law, and should therefore be considered separately. Such incidents are not included on this website, as they go beyond the scope of ODIHR's Hate Crime Report.

You can use what is publicly available on the website. If you require more information please contact us at tndinfo@odihr.pl or via our Contacts page.

No, not unless we have permission to do so.

ODIHR uses the data to form our key observations (see question 2 in section 2, below) and make recommendations to States on areas in which they can improve their hate crime responses. We also use the information when preparing the training programmes and other capacity-building activities that ODIHR organizes for criminal justice actors and civil society in countries across the OSCE region. ODIHR’s capacity-building activities and technical assistance work provide an opportunity to review and address gaps in a State’s response to hate crime, and also to discuss specific hate crime cases reported to us by the authorities and civil society.

Finally, ODIHR uses the findings of its report to support a more robust international response to hate crime, including within OSCE high-level meetings and in programmes and activities organized jointly with other intergovernmental organizations.

When collecting official hate crime data, ODIHR relies on the contributions of National Points of Contact (NPCs) appointed by the governments of OSCE participating States. Data about a particular country and year may be missing if this information has not been submitted. It may also be that the data submitted relate to crimes that occurred in a different reporting year, or do not fall within the OSCE’s definition of a hate crime.

ODIHR first consults with NPCs about the presentation of their country’s hate crime data and information before it is published on the website. ODIHR carefully considers NPC feedback and, where relevant, corrects or modifies it before publication.

The key observations published on each country page are the result of ODIHR’s analysis of States’ implementation of their OSCE commitments on hate crime. The key observations can be found in the middle of each country page after the presentation of official data. The issues addressed in the key observations range from those related to commitments on hate crime data collection (such as recording hate crime as a separate category of crime and the need to periodically report information and data on hate crimes to ODIHR) to commitments aimed at strengthening a country’s hate crime response (such as capacity building, a specialized hate crime victim support system, and cooperation with civil society to encourage victims to report hate crimes).

These recommendations can draw governments’ attention to potential gaps in their hate crime data collection and other areas of response to hate crime, and help them identify areas for improvement.

ODIHR has numerous programmes to assist governments and law enforcement agencies in meeting their hate crime commitments, and to enable civil society to support these efforts. 

ODIHR uses the key observations to define the priority areas of its work to address hate crime.

• Learn more about ODIHR's key observations here.

For the most part, such variations are due to differences in the hate crime monitoring definitions and recording methodologies applied in different countries. For example, in some countries incidents perceived to be a hate crime by a victim or witness are recorded as such by police, but only a fraction of these incidents are prosecuted as hate crimes.

Hate crimes occur in all countries, regardless of the data reported to ODIHR. Most States can work to improve their hate crime legislation and hate crime data recording systems, while strengthening the capacity of police and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute hate crimes. These measures can ensure more accurate and comprehensive data and ensure more targeted policymaking to address the hate crime context in a given country.

Some countries provide data on hate crimes recorded by police, but no figures on prosecuted and sentenced hate crimes. This may be because while a robust system for recording and collecting data on hate incidents is in place within the police, this system is not replicated in the prosecution services. It may also be because prosecution services do not record information about the bias motivation behind a crime.

A lack of prosecution and sentencing data can also mean that hate crimes are not prosecuted as a hate crime and, depending on the legislation in place, aggravating provisions are not applied to the sentence imposed on the perpetrator.

A few States report a higher number of prosecuted hate crimes compared to police-recorded cases. This may be because the police recording system is less developed than the system used by the prosecution services. The more regular occurrence is when police figures are much higher than prosecuted cases.

There is no consensus in the OSCE on which forms of hate speech should be criminalized. However, direct and immediate incitement to criminal acts is criminalized across the OSCE region. Where such incitement occurs with a bias motive, it is categorized as a hate crime given the existence of the criminal base offence. The same applies to bias-motivated direct threats committed with the use of words or speech, which can constitute hate crimes.

While many OSCE participating States do criminalize certain forms of speech (e.g., Holocaust denial or defamation), ODIHR recommends recording data on these types of crimes separately, as they require separate and different responses.

It is worth noting, however, that hate speech often occurs during the commission of a bias-motivated offence and often indicates that the perpetrator was motivated by bias towards a group. For example, racist and other expressions of hostility are mentioned in the incident summaries reported to ODIHR by civil society, as they provide a strong indication that the crime (e.g., a physical assault) was motivated by bias.

While in most jurisdictions discrimination is a matter of civil or administrative law, in some it carries criminal penalties. Regardless, discrimination (the differential treatment of people based on their characteristics) constitutes a different phenomenon to hate crime as it does not involved a criminal offence. Consequently, incidents of discrimination are not within the scope of ODIHR’s Hate Crime Report.

ODIHR does not recommend comparing the data between countries because of the wide variety of hate crime legislation, monitoring definitions and data recording practices used in different OSCE participating States.

The official data numbers at the top of a country page present the results of hate crime data collection efforts in a given country. For States where police record the bias motivation and type of crime for each incident (as required by the OSCE commitments), ODIHR presents these breakdowns in a chart beneath the official data table. For some States, these charts include many columns, because the State records information about numerous bias motivations, while in other States a limited number of bias motivations are recorded.

The texts above and beneath the data table and breakdown charts tell us more about the recording methodology and hate crime definitions used in the country in order to better understand the figures present on country pages.

Civil society submit statistical numbers, as well as detailed descriptions about individual hate incidents to ODIHR. ODIHR then analyses both the statistical data and descriptive incidents and disaggregates them by country, bias motivation and type of incident.

Statistical data and incidents are presented in an overview chart at the top of the section on “Incidents reported by civil society”. Only the incident summaries for which ODIHR receives a detailed description are presented in the incident summaries below this chart.

As of the 2022 Hate Crime Report, ODIHR no longer presents attacks against property in the incident summary tables, but instead includes these incidents in statistical numbers. This is to enable ODIHR to provide additional breakdowns of such incidents by type of property attack and targeted property, which are presented in additional charts (for example, see the 2022 civil society data chart for Germany, below). 

Please note that the incidents presented on the Overview of Incidents page only include civil society incidents for which a descriptive summary of the incident is available.

Because of the presence of statistical incidents, the total number of incidents presented in graphics will not always be the same as the number of descriptive incidents available in the relevant tables. An explanatory note will be visible when this is the case. All of the incidents displayed on hatecrime.osce.org were disaggregated by type of crime, bias motivation and country.

Some incidents involve more than one type of crime or bias motivation. As such, the total number of incidents might be lower than the total number of columns disaggregated by bias motivation and by type of crime.

Finally, incidents can include more than one victim or more than one perpetrator, but are counted as single incidents.

We do not usually know if an incident reported to us by civil society has also been reported to the national authorities and included in the official data statistics. However, ODIHR’s reporting of civil society incidents goes beyond the official data as it provides descriptions of individual incidents, giving the victim a voice and describing their lived experience in a public way to provide clear evidence of the types of incidents that are taking place in a given country.

No, our internal database allows us to check for duplicated incidents. If more than one organization reports the same incident, only one incident will be presented in our report, with all the organizations credited as the source. Please also see question 5 in section 1, above.

No, ODIHR analyses individual incidents reported to us by civil society in line with the hate crime concept and methodology. We do not require civil society organizations to obtain approval in order to submit data and information to ODIHR.