A/HRC/55/47 39. Counter-speech, or “speaking out” against advocacy of hatred based on religion or belief is a valuable and necessary companion to regulation of expressions. Its value has been recognized by the Human Rights Council in its resolutions 16/18 (para. 5 (e)) and 53/1 (para. 3) and in the Rabat Plan of Action.71 Countering expressions of hatred should not be left to the targeted community alone. State officials, diplomats, public figures, including parliamentarians, along with religious authorities and civil society organizations, have a vital role to play in ensuring that advocates of hatred are met with a robust response, bolstering assurance among religious or belief minorities that their standing as free and equal citizens will be defended.72 In this regard, the Special Rapporteur is encouraged by civil society-led initiatives to research, develop and disseminate counter-speech strategies among the public and to encourage de-escalation, demystification and cordial dialogue as aspects of civic responsibility.73 Civil society organizations have also developed important initiatives to offer support to victims of digital hate speech, including feminist helplines.74 States are encouraged to engage with and to support such initiatives. 40. Speaking-out approaches are also limited, however, in that they respond primarily to individual incidents and cannot, alone, address structural and cultural drivers of advocacy of hatred or broader patterns of disadvantage. “Protection” from socially dominant groups through counter-speech also can risk reinforcing the victim-status of target groups without addressing the processes that foster such dominance. 41. Both prohibitions and counter-speech approaches may arrive too late to address the root causes of hatred towards particular groups, for example, hate speech and mobilization that serves particular political, economic, social and other ends. Even in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which has a strong provision calling for condemning all racist propaganda and organizations, as well as undertaking “to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination” (art. 4), such measures are to take due regard of other human rights. Furthermore, any responses are to take due regard of a whole host of rights set forth in article 5 of the Convention, including equal treatment before the law, freedom of thought, conscience and religion and freedom of opinion and expression (arts. 4 and 5 (a) and (d) (vii) and (viii)). The question remains, what can a transformative agenda that addresses those attitudes and their reproduction look like and how can it complement and respond to the limitations of both prohibitions and counter-speech? 42. Addressing the root causes of hatred based on religion or belief requires looking beyond individual instances of advocacy of hatred towards underlying processes that reproduce such prejudicial attitudes. Those same processes limit the effectiveness of prohibitions, especially through criminal justice, in that targeted religious or belief groups may be absent, underrepresented or even targeted by those same criminal justice mechanisms. Criminal law is a blunt instrument, and recourse to legal means could foster an unhelpful escalation in tensions and conflict. Similarly, the systematic drivers of marginalization fortify the underrepresentation of marginalized groups among influential political and other actors upon whose authority approaches based on counter-speech rely. B. Transformative approaches: addressing root causes 43. Transformative approaches seek to address structural disadvantages, requiring different priorities in different contexts. However, a non-exhaustive exploration of various important dimensions, drawing on those enumerated in resolution Human Rights Council 71 72 73 74 12 A/HRC/22/17/Add.4, appendix, para. 36; see also A/HRC/40/58, annex I, paras. 20–22, and annex II, commitments VI and VII. Submissions by Sweden and the World Evangelical Alliance. See submission by the International Dialogue Centre – KAICIID; see also I Am Here International (https://iamhereinternational.com) and the Dangerous Speech Project (https://linktr.ee/dangerousspeech). See, for example, the resource hub on feminist helplines developed by Digital Defenders Partnership (https://www.digitaldefenders.org/feministhelplines). GE.23-25950