adding "sexual orientation" to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination or incitement of hatred in audio and audiovisual commercial messages. 95. NGO representatives have raised concerns about frequent instances of homophobic discourse and insufficient efforts by the law-enforcement and judicial authorities to combat hate speech and hate crimes. Effective implementation of the above-mentioned legal provisions is further hampered by a general lack of data as well as low capacity levels for investigating and sanctioning the relevant violations among the authorities concerned. 96. The comprehensive Europe-wide study on Discrimination on Grounds of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Europe covering the period from 2004 to 2010 referred to reports about the presence of web-based hate groups in Latvia.84 The monitoring of on-line hate speech conducted from 1 July to 31 October 2014 by the Latvian Human Rights Centre, one of the leading local NGOs, showed that sexual minorities were among the main target groups of hate speech in Latvia.85 Moreover, in the first nine months of 2015, the Mozaika NGO recorded 14 attacks against LGBTI people, which reportedly did not result in serious injuries. According to the NGO, the victims refrained from reporting the attacks due to low trust in the capacity of law-enforcement bodies to investigate human rights violations affecting LGBTI persons.86 During the visit, civil society organisations indicated that hate speech and hate crimes against LGBTI persons continued to go unreported.87 97. The Commissioner raised those concerns during his meetings at the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor General’s Office, and discussed the application of the relevant legislation regarding all biasmotivated crimes. In this respect, the authorities referred to amendments to the Criminal Law introduced on 25 September 2014 prohibiting the incitement of social hatred and enmity based on “gender, age, disability of a person or any other characteristics, if substantial harm has been caused thereby” (revised Section 150). Section 1491 of the same law establishes liability for violating the prohibition of discrimination on racial, national, ethnic, religious and other grounds, if substantial harm was caused thereby. The authorities considered those provisions as sufficient for protecting LGBTI persons, and that the definition of “substantial harm” was broad enough to encompass harm caused by non-physical abuse and violence. However, the officials indicated that the application of Section 150 of the Criminal Law was still limited, with only one criminal proceeding initiated in 2015 and two cases in the first nine months of 2016. The cases were still in pre-trial investigation and information was not available about the concrete anti-discrimination grounds invoked. 98. As regards hate crimes, Section 78 of the Criminal Law establishes liability for committing acts triggering national, ethnic, racial or religious hatred or enmity, and Section 48, paragraph 14, which concerns aggravating circumstances, expressly refers only to offences committed out of racist, national, ethnic or religious motives. The Prosecutor’s Office transferred to courts five cases under Section 78 in 2015, and four in the first half of 2016. The authorities further noted that while the Criminal Law did not include a separate section directly establishing criminal liability for hate speech, it could be included as an element of a crime under Sections 78 and 150. 99. Based on the foregoing, the Commissioner considers that sexual orientation and gender identity should be explicitly included among the protected grounds in the legislation prohibiting discrimination and incitement of social hatred and enmity. He also recommends the inclusion of homophobic and transphobic motivation as aggravating circumstances in the Criminal Law.88 Such legislative changes can bring clarity and provide better guidance for law-enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial authorities to correctly identify, investigate and sanction offenses targeting LGBTI persons. 84 Discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in Europe, 2nd edition, Council of Europe, September 2011. 85 The other main target groups for hate speech were persons of dark skin colour, ethnic Latvians, Russians, and Jews. See The First Stage of Online Hate Speech Monitoring Project, Latvian Centre for Human Rights, December 2014. 86 Latvia, Amnesty International Annual Report 2015/16 87 Latvian Centre for Human Rights, UPR submission, January 2016. 88At the UN’s Universal Periodic Review in January 2016, one of the recommendations Latvia received in this respect was to explicitly recognise homophobic and transphobic motivation for a criminal offence as an aggravating circumstance Latvia, Universal Periodic Review on 26 January 2016. 21