Hate Speech under International Law and the Challenging Task of Striking a Balance between a Legitimate and a Forbidden Opinion1
Andrea Cocchini · 2024
Atrocity crimes, such as genocide, mature gradually and before their actual execution it is possible to identify some warning signs, one of them being hateful speech against certain racial, religious, gender or political groups. Yet, International law does not provide a commonly accepted legal definition of the so-called hate speech, as the notion is still broadly disputed, particularly in relation to the freedom of expression. In 2019, the United Nations launched its first initiative to assist States in boosting their legal and non-legal measures to tackle hateful speech. Building on this initiative, this chapter first considers the international “hard” and “soft” law instruments adopted to cope with this phenomenon. It then focuses on the issue of how to reconcile the need for every democratic society to grant freedom of expression and the equally imperative duty to protect the interests of minority groups from hatred and discrimination. The chapter concludes that the existing international legal framework is already sufficiently mature to guide States in their national regulation of hateful speech. However, as frequently happens in international law, some States do not seem keen to include in their domestic laws clearer definitions of key terms, such as hatred, hostility or discrimination.