We live in a confusing world and times. In some ways, we seem to be coming closer together. With about 60% of the planet’s population connected to the Internet¹ and an estimated 97% living within reach of a mobile cellular signal², we now have the possibility to connect with someone far away from us in a matter of seconds and to access and follow events worldwide.

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, national and geo-political boundaries had diminished to allow for unprecedented transnational movement of goods, services, and capital. Moreover, people had more capacity to travel and explore the world than ever before, even if the distances between us were increasing. We do not all enjoy the benefits of globalisation in the same way. While the world seems to get increasingly smaller, the gap between the rich and the poor is forever increasing. While we can communicate faster and on multiple channels, we seem to shout more than we engage in dialogue. The rise in popularity of populist parties and narratives symbolises increasing levels of social division and polarisation. While international mobility has increased, social mobility seems to be a faraway dream for most young people.

Global communication does not necessarily increase our efficiency in co-operation and problem-solving; sometimes it actually makes us more egocentric as exemplified by filter bubbles, fake news and the influence of attentional biases. It also creates new divides, amplifies hate speech, and it seems to diminish our capacity for dialogue. It certainly has not resulted in the reduction or elimination of racism, antisemitism or xenophobia.

2020 recorded the highest number of antisemitic hate crimes (2,275 crimes) in Germany, the highest number since records began in the country in 2001. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, saw this as a sign of the fact that “the radicalisation of society is progressing and respect for minorities is declining”. This is not exclusive to Germany: a survey of the Agency for Fundamental Rights of the EU on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of discrimination revealed that 46% of the respondents worried about being verbally insulted or harassed in a public place because of being Jewish, and 33% worried about being physically attacked in the country where they lived.³

We face, at the same time, a backlash to the ideals of equality, dignity and peaceful co-existence in multicultural societies through populist, nationalist and xenophobic appeals across the political spectrum. While we have achieved significant progress in terms of anti-discrimination laws, in our daily experiences we continue to see more and more examples of racism in actions of police forces, in the work of institutions, in mass media and in the daily behaviour of people.

The EU Minorities and Discrimination Survey shows that 24% of the respondents experienced hate-motivated harassment, and 3% experienced hate-motivated physical attack, with the Roma population reporting the highest rate, and with most incidents going unreported. Racial profiling by police remains a practice all over Europe. A report of the European Roma Rights Centre demonstrates that the Covid19 pandemic has affected Roma communities disproportionately with Roma being particular targets of racist violence⁴. For example, in Bulgaria, politicians from the governing coalition called Romani neighbourhoods “nests of contagion” and called for reinforced quarantine measures. The harshest situation was in Yambol where the Roma community was fully quarantined and blockaded for 14 days. On 14 May 2020, a helicopter sprayed nearly 3,000 litres of detergent to “disinfect” the Romani neighbourhood⁵.

For minorities in our societies, be they ethnic, religious, linguistic, LGBT+, or historical or new, discrimination is not new. Its prevalence and extent, however, is more threatening and it permeates all areas of life: provision of public services; employment opportunities; policing practices; housing; political organisation and representation; access to education.

The very idea of human rights and equality in dignity is being contested, and standing for it, standing for diversity, can have negative consequences for young people. The number of human rights defenders, activists and educators who are persecuted or afraid of being persecuted in Council of Europe member states is alarming. This can be explained by historical racism in our societies, the reaction to the speed of changes or a consequence of terrorism and the wars on terrorism. But it is also, inevitably, the result of insufficient efforts in raising awareness and education against racism and for human rights. If it is true that we are not born racists but learn to become racists, no-one is born a good citizen either, since this is the result of a learning and growing process.

Hate speech, including in its online form, is perhaps the most visible part of the phenomenon of radicalisation and banalisation of aggressive populism and nationalism. Escalating intolerance often leads to violence and, in the most extreme cases, to armed conflict. Using the definition of the Uppsala University Conflict Data Project: “an armed conflict is a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths”. According to the project, in 2019 there were 54 state-based conflicts active, the highest number since 1946. Of these, only two were between states; the remaining 52 took place within states. More interestingly, out of the 52 intra-state conflicts, 22 were internationalised in some way, with the United States being the country involved in the largest number of conflicts (10) as a secondary warring party.⁶ The on-going conflicts in Syria and Yemen are examples of intra-state conflicts that are heavily internationalised.

The conflicts in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia in the ‘90s, the current conflicts in Syria and Yemen, in addition to the war crimes and crimes against humanity reported against the Myanmar Rohingya, have brought the issue of genocide and ethnic cleansing back to the attention of the international community. More questions are also being raised regarding the duty of the international community to intervene in the face of gross violations of human rights. Should the international community be more vocal in discrimination and displacement of Muslims in India? Should further pressure be placed on China for its so-called “re-education” camps for Uighur communities in Xinjiang province? The recent conflicts in Eastern Ukraine and the Caucasus, are also stark reminders that Europe is not free from conflict and that hate speech and armed conflict have often mutually reinforced one another.

Every society has been built through the inclusion of people from various geographical and cultural backgrounds. Twenty-five years ago, the authors of this manual mentioned Iceland as the only mainly mono-cultural society in Europe, mentioning, “And even there, things are changing!” Today, we can say things have changed: 14% of the resident population of Iceland hold a foreign citizenship, according to 2020 data.

If diversity is the norm within our own societies, why do we find such intolerance towards people we consider different? Clearly, there is no single answer to this question and developing every aspect that should be taken into consideration would take more than this website.
 

¹ Global digital population as of January 2021                      

² The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 - Goal 9

³ Report: Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States: experiences and perceptions of antisemitism. FRA – European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

⁴ European Roma Rights Centre (2020), Roma Rights in Times of Covid, Brussels.

⁵ Article in Bulgarian about a helicopter which sprayed nearly 3,000 litres of detergent to “disinfect” the Romani neighbourhood

⁶ Pettersson T. and Öberg M. (2020), ‘Organised Violence, 1989-2019’, Journal of Peace Research, 57 (4), pp. 597-613. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program.