Victim Support Europe and WEISSER RING e. V. are delighted to welcome you to the Victim Support Europe 2023 Annual Conference – ‘Protecting Fundamental Freedoms, a victim’s perspective’.
VSE’s Annual Conference will take place at the H4 Conference Center in Berlin, between 7-9 June, 2023 as a hybrid event; we hope to welcome participants from around the world, both in-person and online. This is one of the global victim support community’s largest, most influential events, where victim-related challenges are given solutions, where tomorrow’s support practices are launched today, and where, together, we highlight the potential of our victim support world. This is your chance to network with frontline victim support workers, policymakers, law enforcement professionals, technology providers, academics, journalists, and civil society activists: to accelerate your service, your product, or your ideas that will benefit victims of crime.
2023 – with the upcoming revision of the 2012 Victims’ Rights Directive and other EU legislative changes – is a crucial year for victims’ rights. In light of this, conference discussions will form the basis of our strategic vision for the next decade, and will provide us with actions that will allow us to maintain our vital role in safeguarding victims’ rights and fundamental freedoms. This year’s theme – driven by an increase in crimes against politicians and journalists, extremism, terrorism and hate crimes, as well as attempts to stifle free speech – focuses on the interconnection of fundamental freedoms and victims policy.
Day one will see us explore crimes against democracy in an everchanging criminal environment: how stakeholders struggle to keep up with the challenges created by emerging crimes; and the challenges faced by victims of crimes against democracy. For the first time, day two will be dedicated to the work of law enforcement agencies with victims; specifically, balancing investigative work with respect for victims’ fundamental rights, and providing a secure social environment with developing a victim-sensitive trustworthy police service. On day three, discussion will focus on supporting vulnerable populations in the midst of conflict and how scaling up aid might address fragility, conflict, and violence.
At a time of great uncertainty, when fundamental democratic rights and issues of civil and minority rights are at stake across many sectors of global society, we gather together to ask a simple question: Where to next?
Join us in Berlin and experience our world in a new light.