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On April 1, 2022, a day before International Fact-Checking Day, the United Nations Human Rights Council met to discuss a new resolution to combat fake news, urging council members to address hate speech. Ukraine, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States sponsored a draught resolution to the Geneve Forum, which emphasized the role of governments in combating fake news.
According to the council, "the growing and far-reaching negative impact on the enjoyment and realization of human rights caused by the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either to cause harm or for personal, political, or financial gain."
Although China regards disinformation as a common enemy of the international community, it has withdrawn its support of the draft proposal because it does not emphasize the root causes of fake news and the role of human rights mechanisms.
Venezuela also rejected the resolution text, claiming it was biased and that some of the draft's sponsors were behind disinformation campaigns. Meanwhile, France has insisted that misinformation is being used to target journalists and human rights activists and has called for increased efforts to combat it.
Otherwise, India stated that as the impact of social media companies grew, these platforms played an important role in combating fake news. Indonesia also stated that countering misinformation was a "top priority" before insisting that policies should be designed by national authorities to take cultural differences into account.
According to the UN website, "the dissemination of fake news came to the fore in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with unscientific remedies and anti-vaxxers gaining a massive online following among communities taken in by a proliferation of fake news and rumors."
The council also noted that the disinformation phenomenon emerged during the Ukrainian crisis and impacted the International Committee of the Red Cross, intending to destroy the trust relationship that humanitarians require to operate in war zones.
Misbar’s Sources:
United Nations
