Trust – Muslim Women’s Rights

TRUST aims to deal with the reasons behind under-reporting and under-recording by developing a participatory dialogue between representatives of law enforcement agencies, local authorities, CSOs practitioners and community leaders of vulnerable migrant communities. The project seeks to:

• Map the different typologies of discrimination, violence and hate crime against Muslim women in Italy, including intersectionalities between racism and other forms of prejudice;
• Define the causes behind the phenomena of under-reporting and under-recording of hate crimes and hate speech targeting Muslim women in Italy;
• Promote and foster the dialogue between different stakeholders to identify common solutions to tackle the issues of under-reporting and recording;
• Strengthen an effective response mechanism for facilitating reporting and recording of discrimination and crimes against Muslim women

According to recent studies, 65% of Muslims living in Italy have been victims of violence, discrimination or prejudice (L’Islam Italiano – F. Ciocca, 2019). Islamophobia is a form of discrimination that affects Muslim women disproportionately, due to its intersection with misogyny and sexism.

Under-reporting and under-recording of cases of hate crime and hate speech against the Muslim community are an issue in Europe, but particularly in Italy: in 2019, 1.119 hate crimes were recorded by the Italian police, a figure that is twice that of 2015 but that is substantially low if compared with the number of cases recorded in 2019 in other European major countries. Of those 1.119 cases, 805 have been motivated by racism and xenophobia.