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4.2.4 Reaching and Supporting Victims of Hate Crime
The following sub-chapter provides short »case studies« of selected NGOs providing legal advice and various other services to victims of hate crimes. We start by presenting NGO activities in the field of victim support with a brief account of the general concept of the CIVITAS projects, since this can be considered the most advanced and comprehensive approach in the respective field in Germany. In order to capture the different local settings and circumstances, we will concentrate on two organizations that operate in these contexts: ReachOut, an NGO in the urban environment of Berlin, and Statewide Victim Counseling, Support and Information for Those Affected by Right-wing Violence (Landesweite Opferberatung, Beistand und Information für Betroffene rechter Gewalt, LOBBI e.V.) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an NGO active in smaller cities and a mostly rural environment.
In a second section, we will look at the provisions for victim assistance in various federal states under the new national program Consultation Networks and Mobile Intervention Against Right-wing Extremism, followed by an account of the work of NGOs providing services to victims of homophobic assaults, with a focus on Berlinbased projects and some information on similar organizations in different parts of Germany. In the fourth part, we briefly present the work of anti-discrimination offices, with a special focus on North Rhine-Westphalia, where state government funding in the 1990s (under the auspices of a Green/SPD government coalition) allowed the establishment of a network of pilot projects earlier than in other regions. We will conclude our sample of case studies with a brief account and discussion of the services offered by general victim support organizations.
(OPP)
