A/76/380 88. In tackling the rising tide of disinformation, the European Democracy Action Plan condemns “information influence operations” and the European Commission is considering various deterrents for perpetrators, including sanctions. 191 Some media outlets have conducted media literacy programmes to teach children and adolescents about thinking critically when reading news and to appreciate high -quality news content, thereby tackling the effects of disinformation. 192 89. Within the educational sphere, the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe guide the preparation of public school curricula teaching about diverse religions and beliefs and promote critical thinki ng. 193 Critical thinking is also a core principle of the #Faith4Rights toolkit. 194 The educational outreach programmes of UNESCO are aimed at fostering children’s critical thinking in assessing and responding to extremist online content. 195 90. Finally, the Special Rapporteur highlights the efforts of several local, regional and international civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and leaders of all faiths and none, to monitor and report on practices that could violate freedom of thought. For instance, Humanists International produce an annual “Freedom of Thought” report. VIII. Conclusions 91. In the words of one scholar, “[t]o lose freedom of thought is to lose our dignity, our democracy and our very selves”. 196 Many consider that the freedom is not only fundamental, but also foundational as the matrix of most freedoms, including conscience, religion or belief, opinion, and expression. Freedom of thought is simultaneously “profound and far-reaching”. It protects thoughts on “all matters”, whether about conscience, religion or belief or other topics, and results in one’s beliefs, opinions and expressions, whether vocalized or not. This includes thoughts within a religion, and thoughts that are non-religious. The Special Rapporteur notes that infringements on the right could have a chilling effect upon expression, and vice versa. 92. This important yet poorly understood right faces current and emerging pressures, the full implications of which are still unclear and demand urgent attention from policymakers and beyond in protecting the right. Various State and non -State practices and policies – including “re-education” programmes, torture, coercive proselytism and anti-conversion efforts, forced administration of psychoactive and other drugs and forced treatment for mental health – may impermissibly alter or be used to sanction thoughts, including those of non-believers and dissenters. Some of those phenomena also may be used to force people to reveal their thoughts or physically modify their brains. 93. Ostensibly, modern technologies pose a global and multisectoral challenge for freedom of thought, given their increasingly ubiquitous and developing ability to infer one’s thoughts, even if this ability is currently relatively inconsistent and inaccu rate. As the Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy warned, “[developing] technologies __________________ 191 192 193 194 195 196 21-14191 See https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/edap_communication.pdf , pp. 18 and 21. See https://www.timesnewsliteracy.co.uk/; and https://corporate.telegraph.co.uk/2021/03/17/thetelegraph-launches-media-literacy-programme-for-schools/. See https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/c/e/29154.pdf. See https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Press/faith4rights-toolkit.pdf, p. 4. See https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/policymakr.pdf. See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frai.2019.00019/full. 25/28