Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative (ACSAI) and INHOPE international have urged parents and government bodies to join forces in combating online child sexual exploitation and abuse, by reporting perpetuators to appropriate authorities.
The charge was given at a roundtable discussion and the launch of Internet Hotline for reporting child sexual exploitation and abuse.
According to United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), Online child sexual exploitation includes a wide range of behaviours and situations. Most commonly this includes grooming, live streaming, consuming child sexual abuse material, and coercing and blackmailing children for sexual purposes. This could include: An adult engaging a child in a chat about sexual acts.
The digital age offers unparalleled opportunities for education, entertainment and connection.
But with the proliferation of cyber-technology comes the risk of exposure to illegal, inappropriate or harmful digital content.
International conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography of 2000, enumerate children’s rights and clarify the obligation of states to protect children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.
Speaking at the roundtable event, Commissioner of Police, NPF Cyber Crime Centre, CP Ifeanyi Uche explained that malicious individuals target children online, build their trust, manipulate them to exchange explicit contents online and
use these contents to blackmail and control the victims for their purpose.
According Head of Network Expansion and Partnerships at INHOPE, Samantha Woolfe, their organisation supports and enable INHOPE hotlines in the rapid identification and removal of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) from the digital world.
She added that their vision is a world free of Child Sexual Abuse Material online.
According to her, INHOPE is the umbrella organization for 54 hotlines around the world, saying that hotline is a place where public can report Child sexual abuse material.
“In the next couple of weeks, we will launch a hotline.”
INHOPE focuses on responding to criminally illegal content and activity.
Her words: “My organization is an umbrella organization for 54 hotlines around the world. So a hotline is a place to which the public can report child sexual abuse material. So what we do at INHope is we try to make sure that in every country around the world, all citizens, digital citizens have the ability to report online child sexual abuse material that they come across online.
“So if I’m sitting at my computer and I come across child sexual abuse material, either a photo or a video, I am able to report it in my country. So here in Nigeria in the next couple of weeks we’re launching a hotline. People have been trained by Interpol and Inhope to have analysts who receive the reports, they see if their child sexual abuse material or not.
“Obviously, there’s a question of supply and demand. So the less this content is on the Internet, the less we will hopefully see of it, the less access indeed.”
She added: “I’ve been really heartened by meetings with ministries in the last day or two. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had meetings with the National Communications Commission, with the Ministry of Justice, with the Department of Education, all of these different and NAPTIP and also the Cybercrime Centre of Excellence to understand how they are already in fact combating. Working together to create a strategy that combats child sexual abuse material online. So in fact you’ve got the National Child Online Protection and Policy Strategy that will be launched later this year by NCC and in fact that is already taking into into account all aspects of how to respond to online child sexual abuse material.”
According to Program Director, Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative, Juliet Ohahuru-Obiora, “We are very fortunate that it actually aligned with the launch of our Internet hotline. Internet Hotline is a platform where you can report child sexual abuse material that is what we call child pornographic materials but in in the sense that as an Internet hotline we to facilitate the reporting and removal of this materials online.
“ I am the program director for Action against child sexual abuse initiative and then 90% of our work because we do work with women but we work more with children just like our names goes for. But of course you cannot separate women from children in Africa at large.
“We are collaborating, we’re commemorating and celebrating the launch of our hotline in conjunction with a round table that we are holding with major stakeholders because we’re having these conversations now we’re having this is a new and great area, a lot of people don’t really know what is happening. “We’re having conversations around this issue with our local stakeholders to start building structures and building platforms that can enable us to combat online child sexual exploitation.”