From the adoption of the General Comment 25 which embedded the online rights of children into the Convention on the Rights of the Child for the first time, to the UN Secretary-General's roadmap for digital cooperation – global collaboration for a safer digital world for all children across the world is taking shape.
We now need to step up actionable solutions that can turn this into reality.
Marking a step in this direction, on May 16 2022, 5Rights Foundation launched the Global Child Online Safety Toolkit, a roadmap for policymakers and practitioners to build a digital world that ‘supports children and enables them to flourish’, online and beyond.
The toolkit has been designed with experts, practitioners and young people around the world and is supported by End Violence's Safe Online initiative, aiming to offer an accessible, practical approach for those shaping the digital world.
Powerful advocates for a safer online world
Children, royalty and international leaders all convened at the virtual launch event of the toolkit. It featured youth advocates from around the world, representatives from the United Nations, African Union, and European Union, and Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, as a special guest. The event showcased the resources and ideas brought together in the toolkit and beyond, with speakers urging action by decision and policymakers to ensure children’s rights in the digital world.
The Duke of Sussex shared the need to speak out for an internet much safer than the one today and urged the panel of young people to state their needs and calls to action for a safer digital space.
“Technology will continue to shape all our futures, which is why we must rewrite the rules of engagement when it comes to the way we design and experience it.”
The panel of youth advocates shared their experiences of what the internet looks like for children and young people across different countries in the world, highlighting their need and want for an Internet where they can flourish and grow.
“Big companies that have such power and do much data collected from us, should use that power for good… they [should] use that data and use their algorithm for positive change and showing good role models for children”
A tool for change
This new online safety blueprint will provide governments and organisations around the world with guidance across ten essential policy areas, including legal framework, business and child rights, response systems, education and global cooperation among others.
It contains step-by-step instructions to inform policy and hosts resources and tools that can be adopted in their entirety or adapted to fit existing local frameworks. It will enable policymakers to build, review or improve their policies and practices with respect to children’s rights in the digital world. It offers a standard child online safety policy for adaptation and use.
A critical moment for action
We are at a transformative moment for digital safety of children. Global momentum is accelerating. The new EU legislation proposed for designing a safer internet and many countries such as Australia, Ghana, Cambodia and Nepal have passed legislative acts to strengthen online safety and protect children from online threats and violence.
But with one child going online for the first every half a second, and online sexual violence becoming the fasted growing form of violence against children in the world, the need to accelerate action is urgent and critical.
Tools such as the toolkit being developed and advocated for, well-informed action is made readily available to many more countries and contexts. And we need more of such efforts to propel change. At the launch event, Dr. Howard Taylor, Executive Director of the End Violence Partnership, spoke of the urgency to act particularly through investment in data and research, greater awareness which compels action and advocacy which amplifies the voices of children.
“It is hard to emphasise the urgency with which the global community must act to make global online safety a reality… there is something about ‘now’. We are not just at a critical moment, but at a critical opportunity.”
As children’s lives are increasingly taking place online, let’s make sure they are #SafeOnline.
Access 5Right’s Global Child Online Safety Toolkit here.
Image: © UNICEF/UN014968/Estey