The child online safety toolkit

What is the News?

Britain-based NGO 5 Rights has released the Child Online Safety Toolkit with the aim to make the online experience safe for children. 

What is the need for a Child Online Safety Toolkit?

Education has migrated almost entirely online for a significant period during the pandemic and children were linked to schools through their devices. 

However, being online for children has several risks as well. For instance, research conducted by 5 Rights indicated that within 24 hours of a social media profile being created, children were being targeted with graphic content.

Moreover, the prevalence of child sexual exploitation and abuse is a major concern offline and certainly online too. In 2020, 65 million pieces of child sexual abuse material were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of the United States while many more went undetected.

Against this backdrop, the Child Online Safety Toolkit has been released.

What is the Child Online Safety Toolkit?

Released by: 5Rights Foundation with support from the African Union, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Union and other global children’s rights NGOs.

Aim: To ensure that children’s rights and needs are prioritized in the digital world.

Features of the toolkit: The toolkit provides a practical and accessible roadmap to create a digital world where children and young people “are safe and fulfilled”. 

It builds on existing international agreements and best practices, developed in consultation with international experts from a range of backgrounds. Stages of the process. 

As such, any government can use the toolkit as a building block to work out its own culturally specific set of guidelines for online safety.

Source: The post is based on the article “The child online safety toolkit” published in The Hindu on 20th May 2022.