Regrettably, this year too was marked by a number of appalling incidents related to discrimination, racism, xenophobia, hate speech and other manifestations of intolerance, particularly against Muslims, in some of the participating States, the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, stated at the meeting of the Council of the OSCE Foreign Ministers. Such negative phenomena in the OSCE area violate human rights and fuel tensions globally. As the Chairman of the Ministerial Council of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Azerbaijan calls on the OSCE participating States to undertake concrete measures to combat this phenomena through the promotion of tolerance and overcoming of ignorance about Islam, the Minister said.