The fight against all forms of hate crime is one of the priorities of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).
Italy has always been a great supporter of the work of ODIHR, and is the only country to have had two Directors: the first Luchino Cortese and the current Matteo Mecacci.
In close cooperation with civil society, the ODIHR works to highlight hate crimes where they still persist and advises on how to counter them. To this end, it produces annual reports in the following macro-areas:
- Racist and xenophobic hate crime
- Anti-Roma hate crime
- Anti-Semitic hate crime
- Anti-Muslim hate crime
- Anti-Christian hate crime
- Other hate crime based on religion or belief
- Gender-based hate crime
- Anti-LGBTI hate crime
- Disability hate crime
With regard to the fight against anti-Semitism, the Office regularly publishes educational materials to help middle and high school teachers deal with the topic.
In this area, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has recently supported a project to make a large number of these manuals available in Italian. In November 2021, the Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi and the Director of ODIHR participated in the presentation of the guidelines at the Ministry of Education in Rome.
The aim of the textbooks is to help teachers at various levels of teaching to deal with anti-Semitism in practice in the school environment, for example by offering guides on how to respond to difficult questions or behaviour of students and by providing information on other readings in case of further study. These agile publications are rich in data and definitions, to allow students to fully understand the world of Judaism, the historical roots of anti-Semitism and learn how to fight against violent episodes, including online.