UN official calls for clampdown on Internet-driven racism

A top UN human rights official has called for further measures to prevent the propagation of racial hatred carried on the Internet.

Speaking at an intergovernmental working group in Geneva, Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan said that stamping out discrimination was not only a matter for lofty statements, "it is a matter for determined, preventive action”.

Mr Ramcharan asked the panel at its four-day meeting in Geneva to look at a number of areas for further "standard setting".

He outlined the need for: an international convention on the prevention of ethnic cleansing; an international convention on human rights education; a protocol to the Genocide Convention enshrining strong measures for the prevention of genocide; an international declaration to counter discrimination against indigenous populations; and an instrument to prevent the propagation of hatred through the Internet.

“At the start of the 21st century it is overdue that we set new courses for the prevention of discrimination and the prevention of gross violations of human rights,” he said.

“It is a sad fact of the contemporary world that hatred is being spread through the Internet by unscrupulous and misguided people. The Internet is one of the most effective medium of communication we have in the world.”

He called ethnic cleansing “the most shocking form of discrimination in the contemporary world” and stressed the need for human rights education to begin with the young.

(gmcg)