Tag: hate speech

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EN Hatedemics News Projects

We participated in the International Conference ‘Artificial Intelligence against Hate and Disinformation’

Last Thursday, March 13th, the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies participated in the international conference ‘Artificial Intelligence against Hate and Disinformation’ in Brussels, organized by ALDA (European Association for Local Democracy) and the Hatedemics’ Consortium.

The conference featured the presentation of initial findings from the Hatedemics project, which is developing advanced tools to detect, analyze, and counter harmful narratives, including racism, xenophobia, conspiracy theories, and intolerant discourse.

Lucía García del Moral, a researcher and international project manager at the Foundation, presented the methodological approach for the effective implementation of the Hatedemics Advanced Platform. She emphasized the importance of actively engaging NGOs, CSOs, fact-checkers, journalists, and young activists in the daily use of this tool to effectively combat hate and disinformation.

About the Hatedemics Project:

Following the conference, the Hatedemics project consortium held an internal meeting. HATEDEMICS, funded by the European Commission, aims to combat online hate speech and disinformation. The Euro-Arab Foundation leads the research component of the consortium.

The project’s primary goal is to empower NGOs, civil society organizations, media professionals, public authorities, and young activists to address these issues, with a focus on their impact on vulnerable groups. HATEDEMICS addresses the interconnected nature of hate speech and misinformation in the digital sphere.

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News Projects Rebel EN

Migrant women will actively participate in the European ReBel project

ReBel, a project funded by the European Commission in the framework of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Program (CERV), begins its work after the inaugural event held on September 9 in Helsinki. Coordinated by the Finnish Laurea University of Applied Sciences, the consortium is made up of the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies, for Spain and under the coordination of researchers Karen Hough and Jusaima Moaid-Azm Peregrina; the international organization What Design Can Do for the Netherlands and the training center Visiopintokeskusvisio, for Finland.

The cornerstone of this project are the migrant women who have been in European host countries for more than 5 years, women who will collaborate with professional designers to create models and solutions for different contexts in the countries where this European project is being developed: Spain, Finland and Holland.

The role of the Euro-Arab Foundation

The Euro-Arab Foundation will lead the preliminary research work package that will lay the foundations of the project and will comparatively analyze other European projects that have also focused on the sense of belonging of migrants. Subsequently, a survey will be elaborated -under European standards- that will collect the experience of migrant women and their feelings towards the reception received. Likewise, Euroarab will be in charge of the so-called “research dialogues” in Spain, which will bring together local participants, migrant women, NGOs and authorities in workshops where they will address different topics such as xenophobic attacks, resilience strategies or barriers to overcome. Co-creative collaboration workshops will also be organized to improve the services offered by both authorities and NGOs, and round tables on migration policies will be organized.

The expected impact of the work developed by ReBel will be seen in the empowerment of migrant women, the improvement of their sense of belonging and the promotion of positive narratives. It will also contribute to a broader understanding among society, inform more inclusive immigration policies and provide practical tools to promote solidarity in these contexts.

The models and solutions created by ReBel will be designed within different contexts in the project countries, with input from a wide range of stakeholders, allowing the generation of new concepts that can be used within different settings in the European Union, including municipalities, national authorities, local communities, NGOs and other actors developing the integration of migrants.

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EN Hatedemics News Projects

Euro-Arab and HATEDEMICS analyse hate speech and disinformation online with NGOs, journalists, fact-checkers and public authorities

The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies has organised two meetings with fact-checkers, journalists, NGOs and activists to address hate speech, disinformation and digital environments. These meetings are part of the European project HATEDEMICS: Hindering hate speech and disinformation through Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies, which aims to strengthen preventive and reactive measures against hate speech and disinformation online. To this end, the project aims to empower NGOs/CSOs, fact-checkers, public authorities and youth to effectively prevent and combat polarisation, the spread of racist, xenophobic and intolerant discourses, as well as conspiracy theories, by adopting a perspective focused on multi-agency collaboration, artificial intelligence, social networks and youth, as well as comprehensive care for victims and affected communities.

The first meeting took place on 17 July from 12pm to 2pm at the Euro-Arab headquarters in Granada. The discussion group was made up of activists, representatives of civil society and NGOs with expertise in hate speech, disinformation and digital environments and new technologies. The debate was divided into several topics, on which each participant intervened and shared their experiences and knowledge from their area of expertise, such as the definition of ‘hate speech’, the current legislative framework or how political parties or civil society deal with hate speech, disinformation and conspiracy theories.

The second meeting took place on Wednesday, 24 July from 10 a.m. to 12 noon in an online format and brought together a group of journalists, information verifiers and a representative of law enforcement agencies to analyse the current challenges presented by the instrumentalisation of information for purposes that may represent hate crime and motivate conspiracy narratives. They also discussed the information verification tools they use, the legal framework for action and the resources available to combat hate speech and disinformation online.

The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies is a non-profit institution that works to promote dialogue and cooperation between Euro-Arab societies. The Foundation develops research, training and awareness-raising projects in different areas of specialisation, with a special focus on the promotion of human rights, interculturality and peace. It is in this work that it participates in the HATEDEMICS project funded by the European Union and where it is responsible for the research work package, in charge of defining the approach, the socio-technical requirements and the methodology.

HATEDEMICS project website: https://hatedemics.eu/

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EN PARTES News Projects

«From Margins to Targets: How to Counter Exclusion and Protect Religious Minorities»

Since March 2023, the PARTES project («Participatory approaches to protecting places of worship» – more information here), funded by the EU, has been investigating attacks on religious communities and respective places of worship. Their findings show that minority faiths are more likely to be targeted than mainstream religions. However, the question of the social motivations of this phenomenon remains to be answered.

Read the complete article by our researcher José Luis Salido here.

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EN PARTES News Projects

The PARTES consortium meets in Brussels to exchange achievements and learnings

The entities associated in PARTES, the European project that seeks to protect places of worship, met on April 22nd and 23rd in Brussels in order to share the lessons learned and achievements reached so far. The Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies is part of it and its researcher, José Luis Salido Medina, coordinated the PARTES Conference held in Melilla in March, which brought together representatives of different religious confessions.

Our reasearcher attended both, the workshop on April 22, and the Steering Committee on the 23rd. The workshop discussed the current challenges and issues that places of worship are facing. It also addressed the importance of bridging the communication gaps that may exist between the various religious communities and between them and the authorities. On its part, the fourth meeting of the PARTES Steering Committee was held to evaluate the work of the project over the past four months, identify key issues for discussion and develop a collaborative plan for the coming months.

Currently, the PARTES consortium is compiling local communication and security strategies to protect places of worship in ten European Union countries.

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EN Hatedemics News Projects

The Euro-Arab Foundation in the meeting of the European Commission’s DG JUST

Reunión en Bruselas de coordinadoras de proyectos europeos financiados por el programa DG JUST de la Comisión Europea. 16 de abril de 2024

On 16 and 17 April, the European Commission is bringing together in Brussels the coordinators of projects funded by the Directorate-General for Justice (DG JUST), the department responsible for EU policies on justice, consumer rights and gender equality. The more than 100 people invited to the event will receive information on the new rules for funding and justification of expenditure, as well as guidelines for the quarterly review of each project to be submitted to the Commission.

The Euro-Arab Foundation’s Director of Research and International Projects, Javier Ruipérez, together with Euro-Arab researcher, Daniel Pérez, are participating in the event as coordinators of VicTory and as partners of the Data Equality project, both funded by DG JUST. The first one is focused on preventing discrimination in the use of data and the latter on improving the application of restorative justice for victims of hate and extremism.

In addition to the training sessions, the event serves as an opportunity for the different entities to develop synergies and establish contacts to create networks, which is essential in this type of projects focused on promoting cooperation between justice professionals, victim support workers, victims themselves, researchers and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Participants will also receive workshops on gender mainstreaming or how to include a gender perspective in all their work.

The meeting will also address the call of the CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) programme which, together with the Justice programme, is part of the European Commission’s new Justice, Rights and Values funds. One of the projects funded by CERV is ReBel, of which the Euro-Arab Foundation is a member. It aims to foster social understanding of migrants and improve migration policies by working closely with migrant women. Another ongoing CERV project, in which the Foundation is involved, is HATEDEMICS, which aims to empower NGOs/CSOs, journalists, youth or public authorities against hate speech rooted in misinformation and targeting vulnerable groups.

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EN Standup News Projects

European hate-crime battling project STAND-UP put an end with a seminar in Brussels

Brussels, 11 January 2024.- The closure event of the European STAND-UP project, the seminar “Stand Together Against Hate: A Multi-Agency Initiative”, has taken place this Thursday in the Residence Palace, Brussels, with the intervention of experts on hate speech crime, and the handout of the Victim Support Handbook as an efficient tool to hate monitoring and reporting. The morning session also included the presentation of the EU policy recommendations on supporting multi-agency cooperation in countering hate crime, making a special mention of the use of technologies for this purpose.

The seminar presented the results of various training programmes in different countries included in the project, creating an environment for in-depth discussions and exchanges. Experts such as Menno Ettema, Magdalena Adamowicz, Nataša Vučković, Akis Karatrandos will spoke on the topic of hate speech crime.

The six European project’s partners – National Commission for Human Rights (Greece), Euro-Arab Foundation (Spain), European Public Law Organization (Greece), Agenfor International Foundation (Italy), and European Association for Local Democracy (France), under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Ordinary Court of Trento (Italy) –  have shared the afternoon session’s panels on interagency cooperation to tackle hate crimes and hate speech, as well as local pilot success stories and results developed in Veneto, Athens, Andalusia and Trentino-Alto Adige.

The STAND-UP project, co-funded with 748,780.66 euros by the European Commission Directorate General for Justice and Consumers, has taken place from January 2022 and January 2024 and it has focused on public authorities and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)’ responsibilities and relationships with victims. It has enhanced multi-agency cooperation by establishing harmonized definitions of hate crime, embedded within a blueprint framework for cooperation, and it standardizes reporting procedures through the co-design and validation of reporting forms for law enforcement agencies, and CSOs/NGOs. STAND-UP has deepened the relevant actors’ point of view of hate speech and hate crime, including the sentiments behind them on a local level.

Project’s web page.