European Trade Union Committee for Education

Coinciding with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (21 March), the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) along with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Council of Europe’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) have launched a joint statement stressing the paramount importance of Education in combatting hate crime.

The aforementioned statement highlights that the promotion of inclusion and mutual respect through education and strong positive narratives are essential to prevent incitement to hatred and counter hate speech in the digital age. In particular, the following three key-messages can be underlined:

• Political and citizenship’s responsibility is crucial to counter intolerant discourse and hate speech, and to ensure their root causes are addressed through education;
• Encouraging greater media literacy is an essential element to combat deliberate manipulation of information designed to address those who are specially receptive to intolerant views, particularly within the digital environment; and
• Support both children and adults to critically recognize and assess propaganda and political rhetoric is important so as to repudiate, confront and report statements that incite hatred.

In the end, - as indicated in the above-mentioned statement -, it is also important to recall that the ECRI General Policy Recommendation No.15 of December 2015 contains certain guidelines on how to combat the use of hate speech from an education perspective: https://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/activities/GPR/EN/Recommendation_N15/REC-15-2016-015-ENG.pdf