A/HRC/28/56
aimed at empowering children to respond to exploitative situations and to report abuse to
the appropriate authorities.
(a)
Safer Internet Day
61.
Safer Internet Day is a day of the year when all countries across Europe concentrate
on raising awareness about online safety. It is organized by the Safer Internet Programme
and, in particular, Insafe, a network of safer Internet centres throughout Europe. Safer
Internet Day also offers an opportunity for safer Internet centres to release good practice
guides and statistics. Schools normally get involved in the awareness-raising activity to
ensure that the message gets out among different stakeholders, including children, parents
and teachers.
62.
The success of Safer Internet Day has led to it being replicated in other parts of the
world. The Asia Internet Coalition has begun to hold a safer Internet day. That type of
cross-regional awareness-raising initiative should be further encouraged. Moreover, an
international safer Internet day could be badged as a day of action against the abuse and
exploitation of children through new technologies, to raise awareness and call for the
adoption of necessary measures to ensure a safe Internet for children.
(b)
Empowering children
63.
Various organizations have begun to develop empowerment programmes for
children. A good example is the New Jersey Child Assault Prevention organization,51 which
developed their initial programmes to empower children to be protected against (offline)
child sexual exploitation into an empowerment programme for online abuse. The
programme is a series of tailored training activity workshops that seek to help children
understand how to keep safe online, including by providing case studies and role play. Safe
Internet usage is at the heart of many programmes of non-governmental organizations, most
notably ECPAT International52 and RedNATIC.53 There is recognition that there must be a
multi-faceted approach. Key professionals such as the police, social workers, teachers and
health-care workers must be aware of the types of exploitation that occur and how to detect
them and assist child victims. Parents also need to be supported and encouraged to discuss
such issues with their children. More importantly, resources specifically for children allow
them to understand the behaviour, and identify and report when perpetrators are trying to
abuse or exploit them.
64.
A good example of this approach is the 2014 ECPAT International guide “Stay Safe
from Online Sexual Exploitation”, specifically aimed at children and young persons and
written in child-friendly language. Crucially, it also presents case studies from across the
world, with a series of questions to children to help them to work out the solutions.
65.
The most successful empowerment programmes work on the regional and
community levels, as they ensure that people in neighbouring countries and locations are
able to identify the same behaviour. RedNATIC is a grouping of charities from 10 Latin
American countries dedicated to offering resources to children to safeguard them from
abuse and exploitation. Such regional groupings are better placed to work with schools and
communities to ensure the message gets through at the local level and that the message is
seen by children.
51
52
53
16
See www.njcap.org.
See www.ecpat.net/resources#category-child-and-youth-resources.
See http://rednatic.org/publicaciones/publicaciones-de-red-natic/.
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents