A/HRC/2/6 page 6 11. As part of any initiative to review the status of the law in this area, it will be important to undertake a comprehensive review of trends and patterns to establish if indeed there is an increase in incidences of religious defamation and incitement to racial and religious hatred, where and how it is manifested, to what specific causes it might be attributed, and the magnitude of the individual and social harm that it might cause. The information from this exercise would help to inform the review and evaluation of the effectiveness of the existing law, as well as the focus of any future policy dialogue. II. THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK 12. This part of the report reviews the status of the law on incitement, beginning with relevant provisions in international human rights instruments and their interpretation by the respective mechanisms. A. Status of the law in international instruments 13. Many international and regional human rights instruments and institutions deal with various aspects of incitement and advocacy of racial and religious hatred and intolerance. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention against Genocide, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and ICCPR. 14. The rationale for prohibiting hate speech is partly grounded in the goal of promoting substantive equality among human beings, including freedom from discrimination. 15. In that regard, several provisions of the Universal Declaration have been interpreted to permit State action to prohibit hate speech or speech that is considered inflammatory or to incite hatred although the UDHR does not expressly address incitement and advocacy. Thus, the legal authority to proscribe hate speech has been inferred from article 1 of the UDHR, which provides that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, article 2, which provides for equal enjoyment of the rights and freedoms proclaimed in the UDHR “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, (and) sex” and article 7, which more explicitly provides for protection against discrimination and incitement to discrimination. 16. Article 29 of the Universal Declaration, on the other hand, refers to the duties that everyone holds to the community, and recognizes that certain limitations on rights may be necessary and legitimate to secure, among other things, “due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others.” 17. The Genocide Convention of 19481 goes further and in Article 3 (c) explicitly includes “public incitement to commit genocide” among punishable acts. 18. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination2 is the first and the most far reaching international treaty to deal directly with the issue of hate speech. Article 4 of ICERD provides that: States Parties . . . . . undertake to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination and, to this end, with due regard to the principles embodied in the Universal