UN / GENOCIDE HATE SPEECH

STORY: UN / GENOCIDE HATE SPEECH
TRT: 2:48
SOURCE: UNIFEED
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS

DATELINE: 16 JUNE 2023, NEW YORK CITY / FILE

SHOTLIST:

FILE – NEW YORK CITY

1. Wide shot, United Nations Headquarters

16 JUNE 2023, NEW YORK CITY

2. Wide shot, Nderitu addresses the journalists
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, United Nations:
“We also acknowledge that the root causes are not technological. The entire technology is really just the means through which these ideas are communicated. And we do know of circumstances that involved hate speech, for example, in leading up to the Holocaust.”
4. Wide shot, journalists in the briefing room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, United Nations:
“You see the link. The people who go out there and do these shootings, they post on social media and they say, we hate the following people – we hate women, we hate migrants, we hate Jewish people, we hate black people, we hate Latin Americans. They keep putting up all these people and we need to make a direct connection between that hate that is expressed on social media and then twat is actually actualized in the killings.”
6. Wide shot, Nderitu addresses journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, United Nations:
“We have a UN working definition for hate speech, but many contexts do not have a legal definition for his speech, which makes the conversation on speech even more difficult than it would normally be. So we have started a conversation to show the impact of hate speech in the most understandable terms.”
8. Close up, journalist asks question
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, United Nations:
“This International Day for Countering Hate Speech, it offers the opportunity for us to raise this awareness of the dangers of hate speech in a way that is focused, because otherwise, we put out these messages and in many instances, especially when you don't have legal backup, and we find that often, there is not much that people are taking in.”
10. Close up, journalist asking question
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Alice Wairimu Nderitu, Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, United Nations:
“Determinations of whether a genocide is happening or not are done so by courts of law. So what I do is point out those risk factors. Last year, in June, I briefed the Security Council on the situation in in Ukraine and pointed out quite a number of risk factors. But also pointed out the fact of that provisional wishes by the International Court of Justice had been ignored, and that the ICJ had put out a decision on the war that's going on, in Ukraine, and that that had been ignored.”
12. Wide shot, Nderitu addresses journalists

STORYLINE:

Speaking ahead of the International Day for Countering Hate Speech, observed on June 18, the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said that “the root causes” of hate speech “are not technological” but “technology is really just the means through which these ideas are communicated.”

Briefing journalists on Friday (16 June) in New York, Nderitu also said, “You see the link. The people who go out there and do these shootings, they post on social media and they say, we hate the following people – we hate women, we hate migrants, we hate Jewish people, we hate black people, we hate Latin Americans. They keep putting up all these people and we need to make a direct connection between that hate that is expressed on social media and then twat is actually actualized in the killings.”

The Special Advisor noted that the UN has “a working definition for hate speech, but many contexts do not have a legal definition for his speech, which makes the conversation on speech even more difficult than it would normally be.”

“So we have started a conversation to show the impact of hate speech in the most understandable terms,” she added.

For Nderitu, this International Day for Countering Hate Speech “offers the opportunity for us to raise this awareness of the dangers of hate speech in a way that is focused.”

She also noted, “Otherwise, we put out these messages and in many instances, especially when you don't have legal backup, and we find that often, there is not much that people are taking in.”

Asked about the situation in Ukraine, the Special Advisor said that “determinations of whether a genocide is happening or not are done so by courts of law.

“So what I do is point out those risk factors. Last year, in June, I briefed the Security Council on the situation in in Ukraine and pointed out quite a number of risk factors. But also pointed out the fact of that provisional wishes by the International Court of Justice had been ignored, and that the ICJ had put out a decision on the war that's going on, in Ukraine, and that that had been ignored,” Nderitu answered.