Media Freedom - Council of Europe

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland was the keynote speaker at a two-day conference on tackling hate speech in Budapest from Tuesday 27 November 2012.

The conference was organised by the Council of Europe and the EEA and Norway Grants (programmes funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to help reduce disparities in 15 EU member states) together with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The aim of the conference was to look at the nature and extent of hate speech in today’s Europe – especially online – and to discuss different ways of tackling intolerance whilst defending free speech.

The conference heard a number of different viewpoints, including from researchers, online activists against hate speech and relevant NGOs including Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch and the International Network Against Cyber-Hate. Facebook’s head of European policy also spoke at the event, as did representatives of the “traditional” media and international organisations including the United Nations and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency.

The conference was preceded by a training course on hate speech for influential young bloggers, some of whom took part in the main event. The forthcoming Council of Europe youth campaign on tackling hate speech was also be presented at the conference, as were two new publications from the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency on hate crime and victimisation of minorities.

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• Campaign: The No Hate Speech Movement - Online youth campaign

The Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of Austria together with the Council of Europe organised a conference "Our Internet - Our Rights, Our Freedoms" on 24 and 25 November 2011 in Vienna.

The aim of the Conference was the elaboration of a new four-year Council of Europe strategy to advance the protection and respect for human rights, rule of law and democracy on the Internet.

The themes of the Conference included Internet and democracy, privacy standards, harm to the Internet’s functioning also harming human rights, fighting cybercrime, protecting and empowering children, what are governments’ responsibilities in protecting human rights on the Internet, and developing a charter of Internet rights to empower and enable citizens online.

• Website of the conference