Action Day Against Racism and Xenophobia in Spain - No Hate Speech 1 Favorite 

The No Hate Speech campaign has come to its fourth anniversary this week, because it was on the 18th of March 2013 when the Spanish Institute for Youth IMG_9707(INJUVE) officially launched the campaign in Spain, to commemorate the 21st of March, declared by the UN as Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of that year. In this occasion, and as part of the Spanish No Hate Speech campaign, at INJUVE we decided to mark this date as an important day of action within the campaign, and to make an event together with the Spanish Youth Council (CJE) and the NGO Movimiento Contra la Intolerancia (Movement Against Intolerance). With this framework, we held a series of activities that aimed to raise awareness of this problem and find ways to address it.

The event, which could be followed on twitter under the hashtag #21MNoHate (becoming trending topic in the afternoon) was divided in three parts. In the presentation, Injuve’s Director General opened the day, speaking of the importance of taking action against racism, highlighted the commitment of Injuve towards the No Hate campaign, and expressed his support to this line of work beyond the official closing of the campaign. The president of the Spanish Youth Council and the Movement against Intolerance reminded the work done so far in this issue and in general against discrimination, and praised the cooperation of public, NGO and youth movement to make successful campaign activities.

The opening was followed by a demonstration in the street outside Injuve, with the No Hate logos, where all participants observed a minute of silence and the reading of a manifesto in memory of the victims of hate crimes.

The second part of the event consisted of a round table, with a presentation of the state of play of the issue of racism and xenophobia in Spain. The panel was composed by a Afro-Spanish students and young Roma NGO members, a teacher specialist in bullying, a victim of a racist hate crime; all of them stressed the importance of campaigning in combatting racism and xenophobia. And within the panel there was a presentation of Bookmarks, as a powerful means to work to prevent this kind of attitudes among Spanish young people. In the afternoon there was a training workshop to show how of face Hate Speech, how to identify it and to discuss the best ways to address it.