From institutionalized racism to genocide, the roots are the same, according to people on the frontlines of change who shared their stories with UN News ahead of the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, observed on Sunday.
Social media's role in crushing hate speech
From COVID-19 to climate change, hateful exchanges among those with opposing views is a growing concern, said Latifa Akharbach, president of the High Authority of Audiovisual Communication (HACA) in Morocco.
The international community's "failure" in managing and regulating migration "fuels the sponsors of hate speech" and helps them follow through with their plans, she said, calling on governments to adopt fair positions in the face of separation movements, terrorism, and violations of human rights.
She shared her perspective on the sidelines of the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) ninth Global Forum, in Fez, Morocco, where a panel on countering and addressing online hate speech on social media had revisited the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech, launched on this day in 2019.
Dwindling diversity is another concern, said Faouzi Skali, president of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture. Promoting diversity must be understood across the media domain and social networks, especially at a time when it is already disappearing around the world, he explained.
Noting that 100 languages are spoken by 95 per cent of the world's population, he said only "12 of them dominate all digital communication on a planetary scale". At the current rate, "we lose about one language a week", he added, noting that there are only 6,000 languages left of the 20,000 spoken in the Neolithic era.
Pre-TikTok
Had social media existed in 1994, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda would have been "much worse", according to survivor Henriette Mutegwaraba, who recalled the hate speech propagated via radio at the time.
"A message that used to take years to spread can now be put out there, and in one second, everybody in the world can see it," she said. "If there was Facebook, Tik Tok, and Instagram, it would have been much worse. The bad people always go to youth, whose minds are easy to corrupt. Who is on social media now? Most of the time, young people."
