On the 21st and the 22nd of June 2022 we had the opportunity to participate at the European Development Days 2022. As every year, the event has the purpose to gather, in a two-day event, bring the development community together each year to share ideas and experiences in ways that inspire new partnerships and innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.
The EDD’s 2022 focus was on the Commission “Global Gateway” strategy, which aims to build a sustainable and resilient partnership with countries from Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, Indo-Pacific and the EU Neighborhood.
Taking in consideration some of the main topics, which were digitalization, innovation, and media development, ECES had the occasion to promote its work on “Media Monitoring, Hate Speech and Gender-based Violence”, contextualized inside an electoral prospective. On this occasion, we have produced a paper to illustrate during the event our experiences on the matter. In particular, hate speech on social media and other platforms is known to catalyze environments of conflict and violence among groups and communities during elections. Indeed, hate speech targeted gender-based violence in the digital space is increasingly becoming a threat to the inclusive participation of women in electoral and political life. At ECES we work to strengthen the capacities of our partners to identify and monitor hate speech and gender-based violence and recommend appropriate remedial measures. The paper highlights our work in the last 12 years of experience in the field of Media Monitoring and Early Warning, preventing and mitigating elections related violence and threats.
Indeed, thanks to the ECES’ stand inside the Global Village side of the event, our Team could gather the attention of the visitors illustrating ECES efforts on Media Monitoring related issues in the various implemented projects, to prevent possible electoral conflicts, hate speeches or the development of a gender-based systematic discrimination.
Furthermore, the EDD 2022 also represented a great opportunity, throughout the various conferences and dialogues, to better understanding the future policies and objectives of the European Union, in order to meet the needs both of the partnership partners and of the active stakeholders in those regions.
