New campaign to raise awareness about hate speech

Aġenzija Żgħażagħ has joined forces with SOS Malta and the American Embassy to create more awareness on a national level about hate speech in a new national No Hate Speech national campaign.

Aġenzija Żgħażagħ is the national coordinating agency for the No Hate Speech Campaign, which will include a number of posters promoted online, offline and on a number of bus stops around the southern and inner harbour region of the island.

The initiative is part of the project Young People Combating Hate Speech Online running between 2012 and 2014, to promote equality, dignity, human rights and diversity.

"It seeks to raise awareness and come up with creative solutions to tackle hate speech, which ultimately is a crime. This project empowers young people and youth organizations to acquire knowledge, participate and take action against human rights violations," Aġenzija Żgħażagħ said in a statement.

Hate speech re forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred. It is also a form of expression that elicits xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance and may include aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination against minorities and hostility towards migrants.

United States ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley joined parliamentary secretary for youth and sports Stefan Buontempo, SOS Malta chief executive Claudia Taylor-East, CEO of SOS Malta, and Miriam Teuma, CEO of Agenzija Zghazagh, to launch the No Hate Speech campaign.

"Violations of human rights transcend borders, and that we must address them as a community. Hate speech is often the precursor of discrimination and violence. This campaign is part of an effort to reduce discrimination and violence against minorities for the fact of being different," Abercrombie-Winstanley said.

"Sadly, no society is immune to intolerance. But its prevalence means we have a duty to fight it.  We must make a conscious decision to find our common humanity in one another."

Opinion surveys and reports from international bodies like the Council of Europe and the EU reveal rising xenophobia and discrimination based on religious beliefs, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender. 

The EEA & Norway Grants support a range of initiatives to tackle hate speech online and offline in the various funding sectors, mainly through civil society and the NGO programme.

SOS Malta has been appointed Fund Operator for the NGO Programme Malta.  In the first open call for project proposals in May 2013, a total of four projects received funding.  Of these four projects, three projects deal indirectly with hate related issues.