The Council of Europe against online hate speech: Conundrums and challenges

"Although the term, hate speech, is widely used in legal, policy-making and academic circles, there is often disagreement about its scope and about how it can best be countered. This paper will commence by briefly unravelling the term, hate speech, and explaining why differentiated strategies are required to effectively combat hate speech. The introduction will also briefly situate hate speech within international human rights treaty law. Section I will provide a general overview of the Council of Europe’s strategies against hate speech, which include treaty-based approaches, monitoring systems, political and policy-making measures, educational, informational and cultural initiatives, etc. This overview does not purport to be comprehensive, much less exhaustive. Rather, it will sketch, in an indicative manner, the broad lines of the Council of Europe’s strategies against hate speech. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) will be examined in greater detail than the other treaties because of its central position in the Council’s legal arsenal and its consequent referential value for all of the Council’s other treaties and instruments. Particular attention will be paid to the tensions between freedom of political expression and the permissibility of hate speech as the challenge of resolving those tensions represents a real stress test for the ECHR’s commitment to the right to freedom of expression. Section II of the paper will explore new dimensions to hate speech that have emerged – and continue to emerge – in the online environment. It will then provide by an assessment of the Council of Europe’s specific responses to these new dimensions. It will conclude by putting forward a number of recommendations for policy making and future lines of action by various Council of Europe bodies in order to tackle online hate speech."