Local Activities

Local Activities

As part of the project, eight European organisations have developed local activities aimed at promoting tolerance and fighting discrimination in their country. Here we document their activities and make the results of their work available for download.

Spanish Forum for Prevention and Urban Security (Fórum Español para la Prevención y la Seguridad Urbana, FEPSU) – Spain

The Spanish Forum for Prevention and Urban Security produced a guide titled “How to Fight Hate Crimes?” (“Como luchar contra los delitos de odio”) as well as a series of educational documents  and a video. These materials can be used as educational tools and to encourage debate on public policies, in schools, in the media, in civil society and in the private sector.

Institute for Conflict Research (Institut für Konflikt Forschung, IKF) – Austria

The Vienna-based Institute for Conflict Research (IKF) held a dissemination event for the JUST project in cooperation with the Austrian Association of Cities and Towns (Österreichischer Städtebund) in conjunction with the a meeting of the association’s expert committee on integration in October 2017. On this occasion, an article on the project was published in the association’s magazine of Austrian municipalities (Österreichische Gemeindezeitung) titled “Living Integration – Answers from Austria”.

Moreover, IKF cooperated with the Austrian Conflict, Peace and Democracy Cluster, a network of Austrian research institutions, which contributes to the peaceful, non-violent and non-discriminatory development of society from the point of view of science, theory and practice. IKF published three articles on the clusters “CPD Policy Blog”, presenting central outcomes of the project.

Italian Forum for Urban Security (Italiano per la Sicurezza Urbana, FISU) – Italy

The Italian Forum for Urban Security produced a documentary video on hate speech and hate crime as part of the project. The central part of the video consists of interviews conducted in Brescia, Lucca and Pesaro with elementary school children. The video aims to encourage a debate on stereotypes related to discrimination, to encourage the construction of a counter-narrative to hate speech and to foster initiatives to increase tolerance and social cohesion.

While the video was finalized and presented at the end of the project, FISU will organise presentation events in different cities after the end of the JUST project.

FISU project website (in Italian)
Video : “Hate is not a Beautiful Thing” (in Italian)

French Forum for Urban Security (Forum Français pour la Sécurité Urbaine, FFSU) – France

By their proximity to citizens, local authorities can act and create a climate where discrimination, hate speech and violence have no place. To support cities and municipalities in this endeavour,  the French Forum for Urban Security organised two awareness and training days on discriminatory violence, one in the city of Dunkerque in November 2017 and one in the city of Nantes in December 2017. The training days attracted around 80 participants and were held with the support of representatives from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and UNIA (BE).

ToToolbox “Preventing discriminatory violence”  

Documentation: Training Day in Dunkerque (in French)
Video : Training Day in Dunkerque (in French) 
Info-Graphic on Discriminatory Violence (in French)

Belgian Forum for Urban Security (Forum Belge pour la Prévention et la Sécurité Urbaine (FBPSU) – Belgium

The Belgium Forum with the support of  the Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities of Belgium (UNIA) has produced a toolbox whose objective is to raise awareness of local elected representatives to prevent and fight discriminatory violence at the local level. The toolbox will mostly enable local authorities to integrate urban security and crime prevention policies into existing local policies against discrimination. The toolbox contains: a description of the legal framework around discrimination in Belgium; six practice cards focusing on “hot topics” (e.g. managing diversity in your workplace, handling hate speech online, etc.); materials fostering reflection on discriminatory behaviors; an index of UNIA’s offers and services.

Portuguese Association for Victim Support (Associação Portuguesa de Apoio à Vítima, APAV) – Portugal

APAV, a portuguese victim support organisation working on federal level but based in Lisbon, organised a seminar on the violence motivated by intolerance and discrimination in cooperation with Lisbon’s city council. The seminar raised awareness among elected officials and technical employees from the city administration as well as representatives from civil society and the private sector. The participants discussed the role of the municipality in prevention, exchanged best practice examples and received information on available support services for victims.

UFUQ – Pedagogy between Islam, Islamophobia and Islamism (Pädagogik zwischen Islam, Islamfeindlichkeit und Islamismus) – Germany

The association UFUQ chose to dedicate its local activities in the framework of the project to interrogate potential uses of open data in antidiscrimination work. While such data are already use in other fields of public policy, strategies to counter and prevent discrimination and discriminatory violence have not yet made use of them. UFUQ organised a 1-day workshop with a group of city representatives as well as experts from civil society to start the discussion on the topic in October 2017.

Jagellonian University of Krakow (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie) – Poland

Jagiellonian University took up the Just and Safer Cities for All project in the framework of its activities to promote student safety. It held a seminar problematising discrimination and violence at university, uniting experts from Polish NGOs as well as university staff and students. It took place in the framework of the campaign “16 Days against Gender Violence” in November 2017.

The university’s office for student safety moreover produced a brochure explaining key concepts of anti-discrimination and adapting them to the context of higher education, and a guide for students, PhD-students and teachers to prevent discriminatory violence at university.

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