Set up in 2011 by a group of NGOs led by CEJI – a Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, Facing Facts is an innovative programme and network aiming to tackle the issue of hate crime and hate speech.

Moving forward, Facing Facts has evolved into a broad international network of civil society organisations and law enforcement agencies that generate holistic, multi-stakeholder approaches to hate crime monitoring, response and prevention.

Vision

Working across communities and institutions to transform understanding of and responses to hate crime and hate speech in Europe and beyond for the benefit of victims, communities and societies.

Mission

The Facing Facts Network works across communities and institutions to transform understandings of and responses to hate crime and hate speech in Europe and beyond for the benefit of victims, communities and EU societies.

Strategic objectives

  • To promote victim and outcome-focused practice that increases access to justice, support and safety through: improved reporting, recording, and data collection systems; better and more diverse victim services, and; effective, non-discriminatory investigation and prosecution responses;
  • To generate effective and innovative systems-thinking and collaborative responses to the problem of hate crime and hate speech;
  • To support transformative national change agents and anti-hate crime and hate speech communities of practice across Europe;
  • To develop and ensure access to cutting edge, innovative and collaborative learning and capacity building on hate crime and hate speech, particularly in the online space.

Projects co-organised by Facing Facts

Facing Facts is a partner to several projects that support the Facing Facts Network strategic objectives.

“There are also impressive civil society initiatives to support improved monitoring and investigation of hate speech, such as the ‘Facing Facts’ programme”, Michael O’Flaerty, FRA director at the European Conference on Antisemitism in Vienna in April 2023.

Due to increasing demand for capacity building programmes in this field by EU Member States, the Facing Facts training offer is also available online (www.facingfactsonline.eu) and is used by law enforcement and civil society representatives.

Facing Facts is co-funded by the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (2021-2027) of the European Union.

Facing Facts Multimedia Conference. December 11 2018, BRUSSELS BELGIUM.

About the project

The 24-month project “SafeNet: Monitoring and Reporting for Safer Online Environments” seeks to apply a comprehensive and intersectional approach to prevention and fight against intolerance, racism and xenophobia online.

It joins 21 partners, many of them members of the International Network against Cyber Hate (INACH) and the umbrella organisation itself. Many are trusted flaggers and have taken part in the monitoring exercises within the scope of the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online.

The project tasks will be organised in 3 work packages consisting of management and organisational framework; monitoring of content deemed illegal under national laws transposing the EU Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA using the methodology from the past monitoring exercises conducted by the European Commission; and dissemination of gathered data to the relevant stakeholders and the general public.

Up to 20.000 cases will be reported, 10 infosheets in English and 180 in other EU languages produced, online training run for the monitoring partners, standards for trusted flaggers reached for all partners, advocacy roundtables and a closing conference will be organised.

Objectives

The project focuses on two priorities:

  • Continuous monitoring and reporting hate speech content to the IT companies and responsible authorities;
  • Awareness raising by regular advocacy towards the social media companies, providing consolidated and interpreted data to national authorities as well as running national bi-monthly information campaigns involving different stakeholders, including IT Companies, public authorities, civil society organisations and media.

The project aims to target online hate based on grounds including but not limited to racial or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. One of the objectives is to tackle intersectional forms of hate speech.
Additional target groups involve IT companies, national and European authorities, CSOs and media. The public will benefit from a faster removal of hate speech.

Continuous monitoring

SafeNet’s main goal is continuous monitoring of the IT platforms’ adherence to the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online. Our consortium will ensure qualitative and continuous monitoring in a period of two years of the IT platforms that are signatories of the Code of Conduct.

In this section, you can find fact sheets in English and national languages, presenting data and drawing conclusions on our monitoring efforts during 10 monitoring periods throughout 24 months.

Fact sheets in English and national languages.

Number of reports on illegal hate speech

Since the start of the project, we have reported 19562 instances of illegal hate speech cases to the IT platforms.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. The European Union cannot be held responsible for them.

For more information visit the project’s website www.inach.net/safenet/

The main goal of F.A.D.E (Fight Against Antisemitism through training anD awareness raising activitiEs) project is to improve the ability of public authorities in identifying, prosecuting and condemning episodes of discrimination and antisemitic hatred in a timely and effective manner.

The FADE project also intends to:

  • Strengthen the support to victims through improving the public awareness of their rights and reporting mechanisms in order to increase the number of reports of antisemitic discrimination and hatred cases,
  • Improve the cooperation and information exchange between public authorities and other actors such as civil society organisations in order to achieve a more effective response in combating episodes of discrimination and antisemitic hate,
  • Strengthen the data recording and collection systems,
  • Develop a training activity for professionals that are in charge of registering and collecting such data.

This project is developed together with the National Office Against Racial Discrimination of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – UNAR, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities – UCEI, Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea – CDEC, and Reflect – Research Evaluation Training Technical Assistance S.R.L.

CEJI participates in this project as a leading actor in the development and delivery of online and offline capacity building on antisemitism for police officers, lawyers, prosecutors and judges in Italy.

CEJI is a cooperation partner for the project RE-ACT, Remember and Act, coordinated by INACH, the International Network Against Cyber-Hate.

Analysis of hate data collected by members of the International Network Against Cyber Hate, INACH, in Europe has shown that there are strong and documented links between current online hate phenomena and hate-slurs, prejudices and practices that have been propagated in the Third Reich.

To transform these worrisome findings into effective warnings, especially since remembrance and knowledge on the Holocaust and its horrors are fading, the project Remember and ACT! (Re-ACT) is putting a special focus on researching how “old” concepts of antisemitism and antigypsyism are being re-enacted by concerted hate campaigns and where they originated from. Starting from there, Re-ACT will develop, collect and provide educational materials and tools for the prevention of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and other forms of intolerance.

These self-generated sets of information plus a curated collection of high-quality educational materials will build the foundation for the establishment of an online prevention-hub at INACH.

Project partners are Romea, Licra, Synyo. Additional partnerships with the European Union of Jewish Students, EUJS, and the European Roma Grassroots Organisations Network, ERGO, to allow for even more input to the needs analysis and exchange on a European level and an audience-targeted dissemination of the projects findings and results.

The project is funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014 – 2020).

CEJI is a partner of the ‘WE CAN for human rights speech’ project,  which aims to help organisations and young activists fighting hate speech become more efficient by providing them with user friendly tools and training, which will be developed through evidence-based research. The project will also update the “WE CAN!” manual which was prepared by the No Hate Speech Movement.

The WECAN4HRS is co-ordinated by the Council of Europe with partners as (Active Watch (Romania), APICE (Italy), Neue Deutsche Medienmacher (Germany) and CEJI (Belgium).

The project goals are two-fold:

  • To help organisations and young activists fighting hate speech to become more efficient by providing them user friendly tools (developed via evidencebased research and simplified and updated previous materials generated by NHSM) and with trainings
  • To consolidate the cooperation among these organisations and activists at the European level and help them in developing new partnerships with social media companies, other networks of NGOs and national authorities.

Throughout the duration of the project, it will:

  • Research on how to identify situations most likely to generate waves of hate speech, and on timing and ways of engaging in counter and alternative narratives to have maximum impact. The results will help activists and NGOs be prepared for action and be more effective;
  • Develop toolkits and trainings to analyse hate speech, develop human rights-based narratives and communication strategies;
  • Organise trainings for trainers;
  • Organise thematic seminars on ways to counter some of the most common forms of hate speech, antisemitic, anti-Muslim or anti-Roma discourse.
  • Launch and monitor short human rights based narrative campaigns.

WECAN for human rights speech is funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020) and the Council of Europe.

More information can be found on the project website.

The EU-funded project sCAN – Platforms, Experts, Tools: Specialised Cyber-Activists Network (2018-2020), coordinated by Licra (International League Against Racism and Antisemitism), aims at gathering expertise, tools, methodology and knowledge on cyber hate and developing transnational comprehensive practices for identifying, analysing, reporting and counteracting online hate speech. This project draws on the results of successful European projects already realised, for example the “Research, Report, Remove project: Countering Cyber-Hate phenomena” and “Facing Facts”, and strives to  continue, emphasize and strengthen the initiatives developed by the civil society for counteracting hate speech.

Through cross-European cooperation, the project partners will enhance and (further) intensify  their fruitful collaboration. The sCAN project partners will contribute to selecting and providing relevant automated monitoring tools to improve  the detection of hateful content. Another key aspect of sCAN will be the strengthening of the monitoring actions (e.g. the  monitoring exercises) set up by the European Commission . The project partners will also jointly gather knowledge and findings to better identify, explain and understand trends of cyber hate at a transnational level. Furthermore, this project aims to develop cross-European capacity by providing e-learning courses for cyber-activists, moderators and tutors through the Facing Facts Online platform.

sCAN will be implemented by ten different European partners, namely ZARA – Zivilcourage und Anti-Rassismus-Arbeit from Austria, CEJI-A Jewish contribution to an inclusive Europe from Belgium, Human Rights House Zagreb from Croatia, Romea from Czech Republic, Respect Zone from France, jugendschutz.net from Germany, CESIE from Italy, Latvian Centre For Human Rights from Latvia and the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences from Slovenia.

The sCAN project is funded by the European Commission Directorate – General for Justice and Consumers, within  the framework of the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union.