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This month, the UK’s Online Safety Bill will return to Parliament. The news can’t come soon enough for children and young people at risk of online harm and abuse
Child sexual exploitation and abuse online (CSEA) is the fastest growing form of violence against children. Around the world children are being groomed to share intimate images, coerced into sexually explicit acts and images of their abuse shared online, all of which can cause devastating harm.
The importance of the UK Online Safety Bill
With the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) process, the scale of online CSEA is unprecedented, with an average of 60,000 child sexual abuse reports coming online every day.1 Between 2010 and 2020 there has been a 5980% increase in reports of suspected child abuse material in the EU alone.2
Over the past few weeks, there have been signs that the Online Safety Bill shows progress in areas such as outlawing non-consensual “deepfake” pornography and “downblowing”. However, other aspects can be watered down or eliminated entirely. Measures obliging technology platforms to remove ‘legitimate but harmful’ content, including content related to online bullying, self-harm and spreading misinformation and disinformation.
The amended bill will primarily prevent people under the age of 13 from accessing digital services and platforms. Apart from the lack of clarity on how platforms will be expected to implement this, the proposed measure raises the more fundamental issue of ‘age-over’, which could, in effect, deny children under 13 access to their digital rights. The online world is an integral part of children’s lives and a place where they can socialize, play and learn. The focus of age assurance should be on identifying the user’s likelihood of being a child and then offering them meaningful, age-appropriate and, most importantly, safe digital experiences, rather than simply leaving them ‘out there’.
Age assurance technologies as a topic have emerged as a key functional area of focus at the intersection of child rights and industry priorities. It requires solutions to reimagine the current privacy and security dilemma. As part of our ongoing efforts to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse online, the Safe Online initiative will launch an open call for proposals for innovative technology solutions to advance understanding and application around age verification.
We welcome the return of the Online Safety Bill. But its core purpose – to address violence against women online – risks being lost to fringe dissent. This bill is too important to be a casualty of the so-called “War on Wake”. https://t.co/UmhSackGiX
– Women’s Equality Party (@WEP_UK) December 5, 2022
Keeping young people safe online
Important proposed measures to protect young people from CSEA have been prioritized as part of the Bill and the UK Government is working closely with global leaders and major tech companies to ensure implementation.
Elsewhere in Europe, the EU recently proposed legislation that would make it mandatory for tech companies to play a more active role in preventing and responding to child sexual abuse online. These laws represent a welcome step forward and we hope they can provide a blueprint for other jurisdictions around the world. The proposal also raises another point: societies and governments need to do more to understand how technology is shaping our children’s lives and how to keep them safe online.
Data is an important part of this, and the need for reliable data and evidence on what works regionally and globally to keep children safe online is more urgent than ever. Last month the Safe Online initiative partnered with the European Union Parliament and the WeProtect Global Alliance for a unique event, ‘Safe Digital Futures for Children: Data for Change,’ which brought together expert speakers and global stakeholders to discuss the availability and quality of CSEA-related data and identify gaps, solutions and opportunities for collaborative efforts.
Reliable data on children’s experiences of online abuse
What types of online abuse children experience, who is more vulnerable, who are common offenders and if children know how to recognize and report online abuse, we lack evidence that informs legislation, policy and programmatic measures. can Help prevent and respond to CSEA online. This leaves millions of children vulnerable and without adequate care and support. Among the biggest challenges with data currently are the limited understanding we have of how national child protection systems are responding to the rapidly increasing scale of the problem and whether national policies and practices are fit for the digital age.
Safe Online is an initiative funded to address these knowledge gaps to disturb, a ground-breaking large-scale research project capturing extensive data on online CSEA in 13 countries in Southern and Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. The project has already provided important new insights into online CSEA, including the perpetrators, revealing that they may be someone the child already knows in person (in an average of 60% of cases).3 And also that colleagues or friends are more of a threat than previously thought. The success of the first phase of the project led to a renewal of the $7 million commitment in 2022 and expansion to 11 countries in three new regions.
About $80 million committed to online security
The UK is already the largest funder of the Safe Online Initiative at and Violence, having committed almost $80 million. Funding is an essential part of the puzzle to tackle CSEA, but it means little without action, which is why this Bill represents such an important opportunity for the UK Government to take the lead and implement positive changes.
It may not be easy for the Bill yet as it returns to Parliament soon, but we must not overlook the tremendous potential it offers to create a safer digital environment for children in the UK. This is a unique opportunity to set aside polarized opinions and work constructively to incorporate stronger safeguards to protect children from harm online.
context
- Data taken from Global Threat Assessment 2021
- Taken from the factsheet: Combating child sexual abuse: Commission proposes new rules to protect children
- Data taken from the Disrupting Harm Report
This piece was written and contributed by Marija Manojlovic, Director of the Safe Online Initiative
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