At a time when online hate speech and misinformation are on the rise, one of the missions of the UN education and culture agency UNESCO, has been to propose pathways for more effective social media platform governance.

It’s crucial for tech companies to gear policies towards a comprehensive system with one main goal – “the protection and promotion of all human rights for everyone”.

That’s the view of Guilherme Canela, Chief of Freedom of Expression and Safety for Journalists at UNESCO, who will be in San Francisco next week for discussions with executives of tech companies and social media platforms.

Ahead of that he spoke to UN News’s Felipe de Carvalho and highlighted the importance of fact-checking to safeguard freedom of expression.