A/HRC/28/56 adopted the approach of facilitating the investigation of those crimes through the provision of mutual legal assistance and training. (a) Virtual Global Taskforce 71. The Virtual Global Taskforce is a key example of international cooperation. It consists of 12 law enforcement partners59 and a number of private sector partners, including Blackberry, Microsoft and PayPal, and a variety of child protection agencies. The Taskforce helps to share intelligence and coordinate law enforcement, which has resulted in successful investigations. For instance, “Operation Endeavour” led to the arrest of 29 persons in January 2014 for the live streaming of child sexual abuse committed in the Philippines on demand. Another good initiative is “Operation Pin”, which has been successful in seeking to identify those who try to access child pornography. Pin is a site that purports to offer child pornography, but when a person seeks access to the material, his or her communication details are transmitted to a local law enforcement agency. (b) Global Alliance 72. A recent important initiative is the creation in 2012 of the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online, an alliance of 52 countries from across the world 60 with the objective of tackling online abuse through inter alia enhancing efforts to identify victims, investigate child sexual abuse online, prosecute offenders, increase awareness about the risks and reduce the availability of child pornography online. 61 73. The alliance marks a significant step for countries to work closely together, particularly in the investigation and prosecution of offenders and the criminal networks. The alliance could play a useful role in assisting other States who are trying to combat online child sexual exploitation, through specialized training and the development of investigative processes. It is important that the alliance grows to encompass members in all geographic areas. 74. In any case, there appears to be further room for international cooperation among governments in that regard, for instance, through the establishment of a permanent global task force to combat sexual exploitation of children, including online. The task force would be in charge of conducting peer review of policies, legislation and practices (which would allow good practices and gaps to be identified), and mentoring other countries developing legislation, policy and strategies to combat online sexual exploitation of children. 7. Corporate social responsibility 75. Initiatives seeking to strengthen corporate social responsibility have developed considerably, building concurrently on the private sector’s voluntary efforts to take action. Industry has a long tradition of working with key child protection partners.62 Those partners make considerable financial contributions to combating child exploitation and provide technical expertise to supplement law enforcement. In coming years, efforts should focus 59 60 61 62 18 Europol, INTERPOL and law enforcement agencies from Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. The majority of the countries are European or North American: Asia is represented by Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand, and Africa is represented by Ghana and Nigeria. Report of the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse Online (European Commission, 2013). See for instance, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the Internet Watch Foundation of the United Kingdom, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the United States.

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents