For almost every month since December 2020, the regional democratic chatrooms have provided an opportunity for a number of students from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro to chat about democratic citizenship values. This time, the students’ online forum tackled hate speech which predominantly occupies both physical and online spaces in these countries and beyond.

The Council of Europe is the best placed organisation to address this phenomenon and its visible manifestations. In an open discussion, moderated by a well-known Montenegrin expert, the students talked about how to recognise societal situations that fuel the rise of xenophobia, fear of diversity, competitive aspirations and hate speech.

People tend to attach to groups and symbols of group identity, thinking of their group/themselves as being better and stronger than others. Finally, students talked about the differences between patriotism and chauvinism and how fine the line is between the two, particularly in the Balkan context. All of the aforementioned were identified as root causes of hate speech.

The event took place on 20 April 2021 and was organised within the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022” and its action on “Quality education for all” in Montenegro.