Check out this new report by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. Commissioned in 2023, it responds to a recommendation from the Victorian Parliament’s Legal and Social Issues Committee to dig deeper into what drives vilification and prejudice, and what actually works to prevent it.
The goal of this report is to provide a clear evidence base for policymakers, communities and organisations to design effective and lasting responses to hate.
The Commission brought together three strands of evidence:
Together, these sources provide a broad picture of what drives prejudice (negative mindsets about other groups) and vilification (harmful behaviours based on those attitudes), and what strategies have been tested to reduce them.
The report highlights nine best practice principles for designing prevention programs. These include tailoring strategies to local contexts, co-designing with communities, piloting and evaluating interventions, and sharing lessons learned.
It also maps out the different drivers of prejudice and vilification. These operate at psychological, social, and structural levels, and include feelings of threat, media narratives, exposure to hate (especially online), and trigger events such as pandemics, terrorist attacks or political debates. Historical and systemic factors, including colonisation and marginalisation, also play a continuing role.
On the prevention side, the report reviews more than five evidence-based approaches, including awareness and education, positive intergroup contact, perspective-taking, and strategies that challenge stereotypes. It also presents case studies of past initiatives, showing how prevention can combine multiple approaches and operate across schools, workplaces, media, and community settings.
For policymakers, the report provides a toolkit to guide future action: interventions should be evidence-based, scalable, sustainable, and evaluated with rigour. For researchers, the findings point to gaps where more work is needed, such as prejudice linked to attributes beyond race and religion, and the intersections between different forms of hate.
The report is designed to be a practical resource for governments, organisations, and communities in Victoria that are working to create safer, more inclusive spaces for everyone.