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Closing Plenary Session, Upholding the Rule of Law and Due Process in Criminal Justice Systems Warsaw, 10-12 May 2006

Opening Plenary Session, Upholding the Rule of Law and Due Process in Criminal Justice Systems Warsaw, 10-12 May 2006

Opening Plenary Session, Upholding the Rule of Law and Due Process in Criminal Justice Systems Warsaw, 10-12 May 2006

It is important to now what is a hate crime. When a hate crime is committed, one or more perpetrators target the victim, which can be one or more people or property, because of a protected aspect of the victim's identity, such as religion or ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or disability. Similarly, a hate incident is an act of hostility motivated by prejudice or bias that does not necessarily reach the threshold of a criminal offence, or the criminal nature of which is yet to be determined. A hate crime is any crime where the perpetrator is driven by prejudice or bias. Criminal offence + bias motive = hate crime.

Report by the High Commissioner on National Minorities, Ambassador Kairat Abdrakhmanov. Presentation by the Secretary General of the Annual Progress Report on the Implementation of the 2004 OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality. The Russian Federation’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine. Report by the Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat, Ambassador John MacGregor. Increasing military involvement of certain NATO and EU member States in yet more confrontation in and around Ukraine. More than one year after the issuance of a report under the Moscow Mechanism on 11 May 2023 in relation to serious human rights violations in Belarus, and invocation of the Vienna Mechanism on the situation of political prisoners. Harmfulness of Ersatz Events for the OSCE Human Dimension. Twenty-ninth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

In October 2016, the Minister of Justice of Armenia requested the Venice Commission for an opinion on the draft constitutional law on political parties of Armenia. The present Joint Opinion was prepared by the Venice Commission together with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, given the organisations’ previous co-operation in this field. It was adopted by the Council for Democratic Elections and the Venice Commission in December 2016.

This study examines the existence of criminal defamation and insult laws in the territory of the 57 participating States of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In doing so, it offers a broad, comparative overview of the compliance of OSCE participating States’ legislation with international standards and best practices in the field of defamation law and freedom of expression.

Overall, the Opinion welcomes the Draft Amendments to the Law on Civil Service of Ukraine, which aim to ensure the autonomy of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights to recruit his/her staff members. At the same time, the Draft Amendments would benefit from some changes to protect the institutional independence of the Commissioner from any interference from external bodies and ensure a pluralist staff composition at all levels.

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) co-operated with the Council of Europe's Venice Commission in preparing this Joint Opinion, which was adopted by the Venice Commission at its 111th plenary session on 16-17 June 2017.

1221st Plenary Meeting of the Permanent Council