Are Recent Governmental Initiatives to Combat Online Hate Speech, Extremism and Fraudulent News Consistent with the International Human Rights Law Regime? (In Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem)

Are Recent Governmental Initiatives to Combat Online Hate Speech, Extremism and Fraudulent News Consistent with the International Human Rights Law Regime? (In Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem)

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There have been a variety of high-profile European governmental and inter-governmental norm-setting initiatives involving freedom of expression online. Indeed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression has expressed concern about a “wave” of European content restrictions (Kaye 2017; Amnesty International 2017, 37–44; Keller 2017). This essay focuses on Europe’s Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online (the Code) and Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG law), but the legal analysis is applicable to numerous similar initiatives. The introductory section of this essay provides a summary of the two initiatives. The remainder examines whether these measures are consistent with the international human rights law framework and concludes that they pose serious human rights issues.

Publication Title

Special Report: Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem

Publication Date

2018

First Page

29

Last Page

35

Publisher

Centre for International Governance Innovation

City

Waterloo, ON, Canada

Keywords

freedom of expression, restrictions, Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, The Code, Network Enforcement Act, NetzDG, international human rights law, hate speech, online speech

Disciplines

Human Rights Law

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Are Recent Governmental Initiatives to Combat Online Hate Speech, Extremism and Fraudulent News Consistent with the International Human Rights Law Regime? (In Governance Innovation for a Connected World: Protecting Free Expression, Diversity and Civic Engagement in the Global Digital Ecosystem)

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