Organisation

RVRN (Δίκτυο Καταγραφής Περιστατικών Ρατσιστικής Βίας).

Start and end date

Start date:

2011

End date:

Ongoing (as of May 2021).

Scope

National.

Target group(s)

The target group is victims of racist violence. For the RVRN, ‘incidents of racist violence’ include any criminal acts or violent acts or behaviour against people who have been targeted because of their national or ethnic origin, skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex characteristics or disabilities. The RVRN also records any criminal or violent acts or behaviours against human rights defenders, namely any people promoting and protecting human rights who are being targeted because of their activity.

Funding

The RVRN does not receive funding as a network. The RVRN is a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) and other civil society actors that deal on their own initiative with victims of racist violence. RVRN members (CSOs), in the framework of the operation of the RVRN, record racist violence incidents against victims voluntarily.

At the same time, RVRN members support victims of racist violence through their services. The provision of services by RVRN members is project based and depends on the funding obtained by each RVRN member and the projects that they manage to run.

Objectives

• Record and collect data on hate crime attacks and establish trends.
• Publish quantitative and qualitative trends in racist violence in Greece based on RVRN records of racist violence to alert authorities to changing trends or escalations in hate crime. In addition, submit targeted recommendations to the Greek authorities in compliance with Greek and international law on the protection of human rights.
• Support victims of racist violence to report incidents to the competent authorities.
• Promote the provision of information to the public and raise public awareness on combating racist violence.
• Organise and participate in training programmes held by civil society and competent institutional bodies in relation to issues pertaining to the identification, recording and combating of hate crimes.

Outputs

• Between 2011 and 2020, the RVRN documented, through interviews with victims, 1,258 incidents of racist violence. Many victims were supported through the RVRN members’ services.
• Ten annual reports on trends have been widely disseminated and press conferences have taken place with pluralistic representation. • Perpetrators were brought to justice, which empowered communities and decreased insecurity.
• The anti-racist legislation reform ensured a special status for victims and witnesses of hate crimes in the Greek legal framework.
• International and European bodies recognise the RVRN’s reliability by basing their findings on its data and conclusions.
• Institutional recognition of RVRN’s effectiveness has been reflected in its participation in different settings in which cooperation with the Greek authorities is established (e.g. the RVRN is a member of the National Council against Racism and Intolerance).
• The RVRN was invited by the investigating authorities to actively contribute to the investigation of various criminal acts.

RVRN members, apart from their contribution to making hate crimes visible and promoting legislation combating hate crime in practice, contribute to supporting victims of racist violence by ensuring that they have access to the services that they provide (psychosocial support, interpretation and legal support). RVRN members also support victims to submit complaints to the authorities. RVRN members such as the Greek Council for Refugees, Programs of Development, Social Support and Medical Cooperation (Praksis), Solidarity Now, Association for the Social Support of Youth (Arsis), the Greek Red Cross, Doctors of the World – Greek Delegation support victims by providing psychosocial support as well as interpretation services to facilitate communication with the Greek authorities for submitting a complaint. Some of the above CSOs and the RVRN member Human Rights 360° provide legal support for the same purposes, whereas other RVRN members, such as the Anti-racist Observatory of the University of the Aegean and the Greek Forum of Migrants, support victims through other activities (e.g. linking victims with their communities). Many of the RVRN members support victims not only by showing them how to access the national complaint mechanism but also by referring them to other services provided by the Greek state (e.g. accommodation in a safe space so that they can avoid secondary victimisation, and public health services).

Finally, the RVRN constantly pursues the best possible cooperation with the police and prosecuting authorities, as cooperation between civil society and the police against racist crime has been deemed successful for the support of victims. In this framework, in the past, the Greek authorities have recognised the RVRN as a reliable interlocutor and the Greek police have informally referred victims of hate crime to the RVRN, in order for RVRN members to support victims with the provision of services (e.g. interpretation). This collaboration was officially framed by the Agreement on Inter-Agency Co-operation on Addressing Racist Crimes in Greece. The agreement was signed in 2018 and aimed to build a coordinated approach of national institutions and CSOs to deal with racist crimes and support victims effectively. The agreement was the result of cooperation between the Ministry of Justice, Transparency and Human Rights on the initiative of the Secretary-General for Human Rights and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, in the framework of the project Building a Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime.

Description

In 2011, the Greek National Commission for Human Rights and the Greek Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Refugee Agency, established the RVRN on the basis of two major findings:

1. the identified absence of an official and effective data collection system for racist violence;
2. the need to coordinate organisations that recorded, on their own initiative, incidents of racist violence against people who sought their services.

Many improvements have since been made, such as the development of an official system for recording racist violence, but the recording of such incidents by the RVRN continues to be deemed necessary, as the data are complementary to official records.

Apart from the coordinators, the UNHCR and the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, today, the RVRN comprises 51 non-governmental organisations and civil society actors, with the Greek Ombudsperson (Συνήγορος του Πολίτη) and the Migrants’ Integration Council of the municipality of Athens as observers. Currently, the RVRN members are as follows: Aitima, Solidarity Now, Antigone – Information and Documentation Centre, the University of Aegean Anti-Racist Observatory, Arsis, Doctors of the World, Amnesty International, the Network for Children’s Rights, the Network for Social Support of Refugees and Immigrants, ‘Pleiades – Hellenic Action for Human Rights’, the Hellenic League for Human Rights, the Hellenic Red Cross, the Greek Council for Refugees, the Greek Forum of Migrants, the Greek Forum of Refugees, the Human Rights Commission of the Bar Association of Rhodes, Positive Voice, Medical Intervention, Caritas Athens, Caritas Hellas, the Centre for Research on Women’s Issues ‘Diotima’, Center for Life, ‘Babel’ Day Centre, Synyparxis (Coexistence) – Ecumenical Refugee Programme, the Network for the Support of Refugee and Migrant Rights (Patras), World Without War and Violence, LATHRA? – Solidarity Committee for Chios Refugees, METAction, Rainbow Families, Group of Lawyers for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, Group of Lawyers for the Support of Refugee and Migrant Rights (Thessaloniki), the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, the Association of Afghans United in Greece, the Association of Social Workers of Greece, the Greek Transgender Support Association, Faros tou Kosmou, Refugee Support Aegean, Act Up Hellas, Asante, Colour Youth – LGBTQ Youth Community of Athens, Generation 2.0 RED, HIAS in Greece, Human Rights 360°, Melissa Network, Praksis, A21, Simeio for Studying and Fighting the Far-right, Lesvos Solidarity, Steps, Legal Centre Lesvos, Aegean Migrant Solidarity – Christian Peacemaker Teams.

The RVRN aims to record incidents of racist violence in a unified manner and to develop activities to combat racist violence and intolerance in Greece. The process and form used to record incidents are common to all members. The process for reporting an incident to the network is as follows.

• An account of the incident is submitted to a member of the network based on the victim’s testimony.
• The person coordinating the network collects all input (forms) from network members and then disaggregates the data based on specific criteria (e.g. place or time of the incident, type of criminal act and bias indicators). This is the basis for the quantitative and qualitative analysis that is included in the network’s annual reports.

At the same time, the RVRN members support victims through their services to ensure that they have comprehensive information regarding their rights and the relevant provisions in the Greek legal framework. The members also support victims to access the national complaint mechanism, as well as contact the competent authorities.

Critical success factors

• RVRN members share a common agreement on definitions, rules, rights, aims and obligations as well as a common methodology for recording incidents of racist violence.
• The RVRN remains a collective initiative with common operational rules and common objectives. At the same time, the individual activities of its members are complementary and mutually empowering.
• Inclusiveness and coordination are ensured, while internal and external capacity building in the field of facing racist violence continues.
• The RVRN promotes the development of alliances with other stakeholders as well as cooperation with the authorities.

Actors involved in the design and implementation of the practice

• Prior to setting up the network in 2011, the UNHCR and the National Commission for Human Rights consulted with 18 non-governmental organisations that were working with victims of racist violence.
• The RVRN coordinators are the UNHCR in Greece and the Greek National Commission for Human Rights.
• Fifty-one non-governmental organisations and other bodies that provide support services to victims of racist violence participate in the RVRN.
• The Greek Ombudsperson is an observer to the initiative.

Monitoring and evaluation

Regarding the recording of incidents of racist violence, the RVRN evaluates its performance through a quality check of the records. In particular, all the records that the focal points of the RVRN members keep are sent to the RVRN assistant coordinator. The RVRN assistant coordinator is responsible for the quality check of the records (internal evaluation), data collection based on the information provided by the records and analysis of these data. Among other goals, to guarantee transparency of its data, the RVRN publishes the quantitative and qualitive analysis of the data and recommendations for authorities in its annual reports. The annual reports are widely disseminated. The gradual increase in reported incidents between 2011 and 2020 indicates the effectiveness of the practice.

Regarding the services provided to hate crime victims, each RVRN member has its own evaluation system that is based on the requirements of the project that they implement (internal and/or external evaluation system).

Publicly available contact details

Racist Violence Recording Network
Email: racistviolence@nchr.gr
Telephone: +30 210 7233216