Crucial to prevent hate crimes constituting breach of human rights - Armenian Foreign Ministry's Adviser Dziunik Aghajanian

The participants of the two-day conference discussed the issues of tolerance and non-discrimination as important elements in the promotion of human rights and democratic values and prevention of hate crimes.

"We all agree that hate crimes constitute a serious breach of human rights and have a deep impact on victim communities. The OSCE community has underscored on multiple occasions, that if left unaddressed, hate crimes would pose a potential threat to domestic and international security, thus undermining societal cohesion and sowing the seeds of conflict and wide-scale violence", Adviser of the Foreign Ministry of Armenia Dziunik Aghajanian said in his speech at the session on the issues of promoting understanding through open dialogue in the media, including internet, held within the Conference.

In this regard, the representative of the Armenian delegation emphasized the necessity to hold accountable all those that incite or provide platforms for hatred and leaders; to collect data on media-based incitement to hatred in order to assess the hate-crime situation; to continue the discussion with the internet providers to come up with workable solutions to combat effectively hate speech, hate crime and manifestation of discrimination; etc.