victory – Research and Projects

This seminar is part of the European VicTory project whose work focuses on understanding and tackling (violent) extremism and hatred in a holistic, victim-centred way, seeking to ensure that victims’ rights are respected and secondary victimisation is avoided.

Funded by the European Commission’s E-Justice, the project identifies existing legislation, protocols, practices and initiatives around victim support in Europe, with the aim of examining their effectiveness and challenges, especially whether there are those tailored to victims of incidents related to hate and violent extremism, taking into account the perspective of victims, as well as examining other initiatives focused on supporting different types of victims, which can be transferable and adaptable.

VicTory also promotes and guides the implementation of restorative practices, with the aim of raising awareness and empowering practitioners, communities and victims themselves to successfully engage in them, thereby improving victims’ access to justice and key support.

The headquarters of the Euro-Arab Foundation in Granada hosted this Thursday the inaugural meeting of VicTory, a project funded by the European Commission, which over the next two years will work to mitigate hate and violent extremism from a restorative approach focused on the victims.

The Euro-Arab Foundation will lead the project with seven other European entities: the Basque Country Ombudsman’s Office – Ararteko, the University of Porto, Innovative Prison Systems – IPS, the association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Intervention – ILGA, the association Carcere e Territorio di Brescia, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee for the Protection ofhttps://projects.fundea.org/en/victory-2/ Human Rights and the think-tank MAP Finland for research on interactions between diverse communities and societies.

VicTory is designed to promote restorative justice as a key tool to repair the harm caused by hate crime and violent extremism and facilitate reconciliation. It will seek to broaden public awareness, highlight the need to listen to the needs of victims, provide greater access to information to support victims and practitioners and, for the latter, offer them greater preparation. All this, from a perspective of multi-agency cooperation that is embodied in the very nature of the entities that make up the project consortium.

Specific objectives of VicTory

The first objective of VicTory is to create a victim-centred approach to support victims of hate crime and violent extremism and incidents related to (violent) extremism. The second objective is to improve the effective and consistent implementation of legislation and good practices, such as restorative ones, to uphold victims’ rights and mitigate secondary victimisation. The third and final objective is to improve the skills, intervention, support and cooperation of key professionals, i.e. criminal justice practitioners, victim support workers and case managers, when working with victims of hate crime and incidents related to (violent) extremism.

VicTory responds to the priority of the European Union’s call to contribute to the effective and consistent implementation of European legislation in the field of crime victims‘ rights in line with the priorities set by the EU Strategy on Victims’ Rights (2020-2025).