The Rabat Plan of Action:
3 Years Later
Dr. Agnes Callamard, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Dr. Callamard, one of the international experts involved in drafting the Rabat Plan of Action,
recalled the international context at the time of its adoption in 2012, and in particular the many
instances of violence in reaction to speech perceived as offensive to religious feelings.
This violence was also reflected at the Human Rights Council, which saw decade-long normative
conflicts over the adoption of international norms on defamation of religion. The adoption of the
Rabat Plan of Action testified to the commitment of a range of political and civil society actors to
pave a sound normative, legal and policy approach to addressing Incitement Speeches.
Since 2012, the nature, scale and extent of the challenges have dramatically transformed. What
constituted localized, small or larger, armed violence and escalating political violence in 2012 has
morphed into full-blown warfare, most often regional or international in nature and involving
many parties.
Hate and Incitement speech are now sitting at the confluence of three thunderous streams:
religion, “terrorism” and national security. These flows have grown in force and volume, powered
off by a number of speakers and speeches seeking to justify, glorify and incite to terrorism, and/
or religious violence.
The world is very restless. This is tumult or restiveness that eludes both categorization and
geography. For instance, the killings of journalists are no longer country specific or territorially
contained. The execution of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris in January 2015 demonstrates
the globalized reach of the threats. Well-established democracies or democracies in the
making compete with war ravaged locations for the tragic record of the deadliest places for the
information providers.
The restiveness of the world is played out not only at political, economic or military levels, but
also at the ideological, normative level. And there too, the data indicate that we are confronting a
multiplication in the number of normative battlegrounds and norms entrepreneurs.
Dr. Callamard suggests it is thus legitimate to ask ourselves: how meaningful is the Rabat Plan
of Action given the worsening of the overall political and military environment? To answer
this question, she first returned to the Plan and recalls that it includes a set of findings and
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