Hate speech and freedom of religion or belief

Minority Rights Group, in collaboration with the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID) is launching a pioneering toolkit which highlights the dangers of hate speech against those of a faith or no faith and provides practical ideas about how to challenge and counter the circulation of online and offline hate.

Speakers:

Rehman Chishti MP (Welcome and Keynote) Member of Parliament for Gillingham and Rainham, Mr Chishti was the Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief (2019-2020). He is also a former Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pakistan.

Claire Thomas (Chair) is Deputy Director at Minority Rights Group (MRG), where she leads the organisation's work on hate speech affecting religious minority communities. She conceived and edited the toolkit which focuses on what small organisations can do at a local or national level to tackle hate speech without necessarily involving complex legislation or persuading social media companies to act. The toolkit is based on the innovative work of MRG's partners working to address hate speech in local contexts since 2018.

Khidher Domle is Manager of Independent Media Organization in Iraqi Kurdistan (IMOK). He will explain how IMOK trained scores of journalists in Iraq about religious hate speech commonly used in the media and its impact on communities and how it can be avoided.

Shahzad Ahmad is Executive Director of Bytes for All Pakistan. He will share how Bytes for All used software to monitor the extent of religious hate speech in Pakistan and the understanding that the team were able to gain about how and where hate speech originates and spreads. He will also discuss the successful online campaign #Idontforwardhate.

Aila Gill is CREID Programmes Coordinator at the National Commission for Justice and Peace in Pakistan. She will share NCJP's work to capture all the facets of religious hate speech in a lexicon and what the team learnt through the process about how ubiquitous hate speech is in Pakistani society. Aila will explain how lexicons of hate speech are an important foundation for monitoring, understanding and tackling hate speech in any context.

This event is part of the Civil Society Fringe Events for the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief, taking place in London on 5-6 July 2022.