contrary to widely held views, hate speech is not limited to immigrants or refugees: it is also quite often widespread against national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. He regretted that intolerance and stereotypes are being amplified and -even to some extent- in some countries normalized. He emphasised that minority women can be doubly targeted for some of the most vile and violent hate through social media. The Special Rapporteur shared his concern that hate speech is unfortunately too often followed by hate crimes and violence. He stressed that hate speech in social media against minorities has prepared the ground for the dehumanitisation and scapegoating of minorities, precursors for crimes against humanity and even what has been characterised as attempted genocide, as in the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar. He recalled that the lesson we should have learnt from history is that the demonization and dehumanisation of minorities can lead to the worst excesses of hate and violence and even genocide against minorities. The Special Rapporteur finally reminded participants to not only identify the problems and their consequences, but to try to suggest ways and recommendations on the protection of the human rights of minorities against hate speech in social media and identify how this has been addressed in practice in a number of situations. The Chair of the thirteenth session of the Forum on Minority Issues, Dr. Natalie Alkiviadou, stated that while social networks facilitate communication; allow for political, ideological, cultural and artistic expression; permit an inflow of news and raise awareness on human rights violations, at the same time, they constitute platforms through which hateful rhetoric is spread and normalized with minority groups being systematically targeted. The Chair remarked that Internet and social networks have added new and complicated dimensions to the intricate topic of hate speech. She stated that determining the best recipe for tackling hate speech on social media and protecting the primary targets, namely minorities, is a multi-faceted process. She added that determining this recipe takes place within a lacking definitional framework of hate speech, which emanates predominantly from the fact that hate speech lies in a complex nexus between freedom of expression and concepts of dignity, liberty and equality. The Chair drew the attention to the need to keep in line with freedom of expression, as provided for in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). She reminded that to do this, the UN’s Rabat Plan of Action had sought to clarify the standards and thresholds linked to Article 20 of the ICCPR, the UN’s ‘hate speech clause.’ She added that this extrapolation could be applied in a variety of frameworks, ranging from online content regulation to the approach of Courts. She also mentioned that the Rabat Plan of Action refers to the need of a high threshold to apply Article 20 of the ICCPR. She added that a multi-faceted and multi-stakeholder human rights approach is of paramount significance to deal with hate speech and that the Forum should allow to reimagine online speech in a manner which maintains freedom of expression and the empowerment that 5