Conflict of rights and interests

In 2011 the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights organized expert workshops on the prohibition of incitement to national, racial or religious hatred. This document is Ricardo Lombana's contribution to the expert meeting held in Santiago, Chile.

These training materials prepared by The Centre for Law and Democracy focus on three commonly applied restrictions on freedom of expression under international human rights law. They are designed as a resource for professional networks of media lawyers and other organisations working to build the capacity of lawyers to defend media freedom. The Materials consist of: 1) a Background Reading document describing core standards for each type of restriction; 2) sample exercises that can be used during training programmes; 3) discussion questions, also for use during trainings; and 4) sample agendas for a one and one-half hour or one-half-day workshop based on the materials.

In this segment of the MOOC 'International and African Legal Framework on Freedom of Expression, Access to Information and the Safety of Journalists' developed by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria with the support of UNESCO, Pansy Tlakula talks about freedom of expression and hate speech.

This segment is part of Module 5: Protecting freedom of expression in the digital age.

In 2011 the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights organized expert workshops on the prohibition of incitement to national, racial or religious hatred. This document is Nazila Ghanea's contribution to the workshop, it focuses on the Nature and means of effective remedies.

“There is a widespread desire to tackle online interference with elections and political discourse. To date, much of the debate has focused on what processes should be established without adequate consideration of what norms should underpin those processes. Human rights law should be at the heart of any discussion of regulation, guidance, corporate or societal responses. The UN Secretary- General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation has recently reached a similar conclusion, stating ‘there is an urgent need to examine how time-honoured human rights frameworks and conventions should guide digital cooperation and digital technology’. This paper attempts to contribute to this examination. Chapter 2 of this paper clarifies terms and concepts discussed. Chapter 3 provides an overview of cyber activities that may influence voters. Chapter 4 summarizes a range of responses by states, the EU and digital platforms themselves. Chapter 5 discusses relevant human rights law, with specific reference to: the right to freedom of thought, and the right to hold opinions without interference; the right to privacy; the right to freedom of expression; and the right to participate in public affairs and vote. Chapter 6 offers some conclusions, and sets out recommendations on how human rights ought to guide state and corporate responses.”

"This collection of essays includes perspectives on and approaches to harmful speech online from a wide range of voices within the Berkman Klein Center community. Recognizing that harmful speech online is an increasingly prevalent issue within society, we intend for the collection to highlight diverse views and strands of thought and to make them available to a wide range of audiences."

"This ARTICLE 19 policy paper proposes a set of recommendations to be used for interpreting and implementing those international obligations which prohibit all advocacy that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (“incitement” or “incitement to hatred”), as mandated by Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”). The recommendations also apply to some of the provisions contained in Article 4 of the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (“ICERD”)."

This is a a handbook for legal practitioners on protecting the right to freedom of erxpression under the European Convention on Human Rights. The chapters  are: 1: General consideration on Article 10; 2: Duties under Article 10; 3 Unprotected speech-hate, speech, incitement to violence; 4: The system of restrictions within the exercise of the right to freedom of expression; 5: Limitations due to "public" reasons; 6: Freedom of expression and reputation; 7: Rights of others; 8: Freedom of expression and the media; 9: Freedom of expression and new technologies.

As part of a series surveying online-gender-based violence, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) published a report that examines TikTok’s content moderation in English, French, German, and Hungarian. The results point to algorithmic bias. Using the method of qualitative analysis, the ISD researchers entered racist and misogynistic slurs – twelve in total, three for each language – as prompts in TikTok’s search engine and analyzed the produced outcomes. In two-thirds of the videos examined, the platform’s search function and recommendation algorithms “perpetuated harmful stereotypes,” effectively creating routes that connected “users searching for hateful language with content targeting marginalized groups.”

The report “presents an overview of the [hate speech and incitement to hatred] phenomenon, the relevant international norms and standards, including distinctions between types of hate speech, and examples of domestic legislation that contravene international norms and standards. While noting the importance of clear laws that conform to international norms and principles to combat hate speech, the Special Rapporteur underscores the importance of non-legal measures to tackle the root causes of hatred and intolerance. The report concludes with a set of recommendations to combat hate speech effectively without unduly curtailing the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”