“The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.”
Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights
In the run-up to the 21st of March, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Council of Europe’s No Hate Speech Movement is organising a European Action Week to raise awareness of racism in Europe, to educate young people on how to counteract racism and discrimination, to deconstruct myths created around discriminated groups in Europe and to help expose discriminative discourse online and offline.
The Council of Europe has a wide range of instruments to help governments, grassroots organisations and citizens jointly prevent and combat discrimination, and to create an institutional framework based on democratic values to do this.
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a human rights body of the Council of Europe composed of independent experts, is entrusted with the task of monitoring expressions of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance across Europe; it prepares reports and issues recommendations to the Council of Europe’s 47 member States to encourage them to develop more effective policies to tackle the problems.
The European Court of Human Rights has delivered a number of judgments dealing with racial discrimination and hate speech, identifying forms of expression which are to be considered offensive and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights (including racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, aggressive nationalism and discrimination against minorities and immigrants) and making a distinction between genuine and serious incitement to extremism and the right of individuals (including journalists and politicians) to express their views freely and to “offend, shock or disturb” others.
The Commissioner for Human Rights and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe are among other bodies of the Council of Europe tackling racism and discrimination.
In March 2014, the Council of Europe launched the No Hate Speech Movement – a youth campaign designed to reduce the acceptance of online hate speech and to develop online youth participation and citizenship, including in Internet governance processes.
Take the No Hate Speech Movement survey to help the Council of Europe collect essential data on the extent of online racism and hate speech today, and help combat racism in all its forms, both online and offline, by reading, sharing, playing and commenting on the web portal of the No Hate Speech Movement.
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