A/HRC/12/23 page 6 13. The Special Rapporteur would also like to thank the following for their valuable contribution: the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL); Internet service providers and credit card companies, for example Google, VISA Europe and PayPal; and NGOs National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) and Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which submitted information on the issue in general or with regard to specific countries: the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. A. Introduction 14. Child pornography on the Internet constitutes a worldwide problem: the development of new technologies which greatly increase ways of accessing, disseminating and selling this criminal material has contributed to the growth of this phenomenon. New technologies considerably increase the opportunities available to predators by allowing them to stalk, recruit and exploit children anywhere in the world. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there are more than 4 million sites featuring victims who are young minors, including even children under 2. Predators can stalk new victims anonymously in chat rooms and blogs. 15. The commitment and efforts of many actors (international community, public authorities; NGOs; the private sector, in particular Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the telecommunications sector; credit card issuers, etc.) have led to the implementation of many measures: legislative reforms, dismantling of child pornography networks, exposure reporting facilities for Internet users, filtering and blocking of Internet sites, seizures of pornographic material, arrests, awareness-raising campaigns, etc.). 16. However, despite these many and varied initiatives, there is more and more child pornography on the Internet, becoming what is today a very profitable business with a worldwide market value estimated to be in billions of dollars. Easy access to new technologies, constant changes in production methods and consumption patterns, in addition to the international dimension of child pornography, complicate the fight against this scourge in both the developed and developing countries. Child pornography continues to be a very topical and alarming issue. 17. This report has been drafted in the context of monitoring implementation of the recommendations made by the previous Special Rapporteur, Juan Miguel Petit, in 2005; to follow up to the Third World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, held in Rio de Janeiro in 2008; and to follow-up to the recommendations of the United Nations Study on Violence Against Children and the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It is intended to take stock of progress made, identify remaining challenges and make specific recommendations with a view better to prevent and combat child pornography on the Internet.