On 22.3.2013 The Agency for Youth and Sport announced the start of the National Campaign Against Hate Speech Online in Macedonia.
The Agency organized the press conference in which the director Mr. Lazar Popovski, gave overview of the campaign and shared details. The press was held at the same time as in the Council of Europe and other countries where the campaign started, marking the official start of the campaign in whole Europe.
The Agency of Youth and Sport is the coordinator of the National Committee assigned to implement the campaign in Macedonia. The campaign will be implemented in the period of March 2013-March 2014, under the slogan” Youth for Human Rights on the Internet”. CID is part of the national committee alongside various institutions and NGOs.
The idea of the campaign in Macedonia is most of all to raise awareness about the hate speech in online environment and build the capacity of youth workers in NGOs and teachers in Schools actively to address and combat the various forms of hate speech. The campaign itself does not mean limiting freedom of speech on the internet, but many activities which should eliminate hate speech to which youth population is very attracted to nowadays.
CID is actively involved in the ‘No Hate Speech Movement’, as organization that contributed to the preparation of the campaign on European and national level. Last year CID organized a national project on hate speech online, and this summer CID is hosting an international seminar for multipliers about hate speech and discrimination online.
At the moment CID president is participating on the TC bloggers, which is one of the events part of the Hate Speech Online Campaign, organized by the Council of Europe.