The United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Mathias Schmale on Thursday, lamented the misuse of digital platforms to subvert science and spread disinformation and hate speeches to billions of people.
Speaking at a media roundtable on hate speech in Abuja, Schmale said, the UN is worried about the impact of hate speech on society and that, it will soon come up with a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity to detail commitments by UN Member states to protect human rights, especially freedom of expression and information while also protecting people, especially vulnerable communities, from the excesses of the information ecosystem pollution.
He disclosed that the world today faces an increasingly polluted information ecosystem and that, the proliferation of misinformation, fake news, disinformation and hate speech in the digital space is causing grave global harm now.
“It is fueling conflict, death and destruction now. It is threatening democracy and human rights now. It is undermining public health and climate action now”, he said.
When social media emerged a generation ago, Schmale said, digital platforms were embraced as exciting new ways to connect, and have supported communities in times of crisis, elevated marginalized voices and helped to mobilize global movements for racial justice and gender equality.
“Social media platforms have helped the United Nations to engage people around the world in our pursuit of peace, dignity and human rights on a healthy planet. But today, this same technology is often a source of fear, not hope”, he said and described hate speech as a violation of human rights.
Earlier in his opening remarks, the Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Chief Tony Ojukwu (SAN) said, hate speech is intricately related to human rights, either in its form or outcome as it is about the right to freedom of expression, opinion, speech or belief.
To the recipient, he noted, it is a violation of the rights to dignity of the human person and the freedom from discrimination based on religious belief, political, ethnic, gender, cultural or other affiliations, amongst many other human rights.
The NHRC boss said there was heavy traffic in the spread of hate speeches across many media platforms, in the build-up to the 2023 general elections, which left Nigerians and voters deeply divided and maligned.
Having identified hate speech as an impediment to voter participation and access, the Commission, he said set up a National Hate Speech Register to record incidences and reports of hate speech from across Nigeria, training its staff on Monitoring and Reporting Hate Speech and the setting up of Enforcement Mechanisms on Hate Speeches resulting from the electoral process.
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