UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech at the opening day of the 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, February 25, 2019. (Photo: VCG)
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Monday denounced a "groundswell of xenophobia, racism and intolerance" and called to end reprisals with a new global strategy launched to combat hate speech, a growing scourge he said has "poisoned" debate on crucial challenges like migration.
"Hate is moving into the mainstream－in liberal democracies and authoritarian systems alike," he said in a speech at the opening of the council's 40th session. "Some major political parties and leaders are cutting and pasting ideas from the fringes into their own propaganda and electoral campaigns," he added.
At the high-level segment of the Human Rights Council, Guterres also warned the "shrinking civic space" as more than 1,000 journalists and human rights defenders have been killed over the past three years, according to AP.
"We must do more to defend defenders and end reprisals against those who share their human rights stories," said Guterres.
Governments across the world have watched with concern as racist and other hate speech have coarsened the political climate. France and Germany have raised particular alarm in recent weeks over resurgent anti-semitism.
Guterres targeted his rebuke at the vast campaign he said was mobilized against the UN's Global Compact on Migration, a non-binding text that aimed to set out best practices for managing refugee and migrant flows.
"We have seen how the debate on human mobility, for example, has been poisoned with false narratives linking refugees and migrants to terrorism and scapegoating them for many of society's ills," Guterres added.
He condemned "an insidious campaign sought to drown the Global Compact on Migration in a flood of lies about the nature and scope of the agreement."