A/HRC/31/74 on discrimination among the indigenous Sami population, national minorities and immigrants and their descendants in contemporary Norway. The fight against hate crime and hate speech remains a top priority for Norway, and free and open participation in the public debate is important in a democratic society. The combat against hate speech and hate crime has among other measures led to an interministerial Action Plan against Radicalization and Violent Extremism (June 2014). The Plan underlined that prevention in a broad perspective involves ensuring good formative conditions for children and youth, fighting poverty and working to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, shall have a sense of belonging and be protected against discrimination. The representative stated that the general preventative efforts in many different fields can also help prevent people from choosing violence as a means of achieving their ideological or religious goals. Measures to prevent discrimination, harassment and hate expressions on the Internet and to prevent hate rhetoric are also important. 23. The Norwegian Government supports the Norwegian campaign against hate speech, which is linked to the campaign of the Council of Europe with goals to: create contact between young volunteers working to promote human rights an respond to hate speech; train and provide tools for NGOs working in the field; work to increase knowledge in the general public and civil society on how to respond to online hate speech; and, implement European campaigns/action days in Norway; An example of a very concrete initiative to fight hate rhetoric, especially that aimed at vulnerable groups and individuals, is a project for schools under the European Wergeland Centre. It has been closely linked with the national campaign ‘Stop hate speech on the Internet’, which is a part of the Council of Europe’s ‘No Hate Speech’ campaign. 24. Another example is DEMBRA (Democratic Readiness against anti-Semitism and Racism), a Norwegian three-year program (2013-2015) aimed at teachers in lower secondary schools funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Science, and designed to prepare and enable young people to live as democratic citizens in diverse societies to prevent racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. DEMBRA combines the expertise of all parties involved in a program where theory meets practice, reflection meets action and history meets the future. 25. The representative discussed hate crime, which are offences motivated by racism, xenophobia or homophobia committed against individuals or groups because of their personal or social identity. A special hate crime unit has been set up by the Oslo police. At the end of 2006 the Norwegian Police started registering all reported hate crimes and since 2007 (the first full year of statistics of reported hate crimes available), the National Police Directorate has made a manual analysis of all reported cases. The latest analysis (March 2015) shows small changes in the number of hate crimes reported for the last four years. Hate crimes due to racism are the most dominant followed by hate crimes regarding religion, at then sexual orientation. 26. The representative noted that threats, damage to property, violence or discrimination motivated by hate and prejudice is serious for the individual victim, but also creates fear in larger groups of the population. It is an important goal to increase awareness about hate crime within the police force, as well as to increase awareness and police confidence among targeted groups in the population. Under Norwegian law, hate crimes are considered an aggravating factor in sentencing if the criminal offence is motivated by any of the following criteria: religion or life stance, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, reduced physical or psychological ability or other circumstances related to groups of people requiring a special level of protection. This is derived from Norwegian case law, and is also explicitly stated in the new Norwegian Criminal Code, which will enter into force in 2015. 27. The Chair-Rapporteur expressed appreciation to Norway for the interesting presentation and posed some follow-up questions concerning the recognition of Finnish 25