By Antonia Maiolo, UNICEF Communications Intern
It seems our world has reached a turning point in recent years. Since roughly 2005, reports have shown that the digital divide between rich and poor nations has shrunk. At first glance it seems great that that the digital world has spread far enough to reach those in even the most poorest of countries. However before we celebrate we should consider that the fast dissemination of the internet in developing nations is not all positive news.
As we know the World Wide Web is overwhelmingly used as a power for good. It provides millions of people access to a vast pool of information, entertainment and news. One minute you can be reading about the latest situation in war-torn Libya, and the next you can be trawling through images of A-list celebs at the Globes, with just the press of a few keys and the click of a mouse.
What I and most others love about the net is that it’s fast, cheap and easy.
However, it’s these same pro’s that have inspired the bad side of the net. Recent findings have shown that the internet has made locating images of child pornography much simpler.
The fact is pornography is a major component of the internet. It comes in large quantities and various forms with sadly a considerable amount of it dedicated to exploiting children in a sexual manner.
UNICEF has found that some 2 million children (mainly girls but also a significant number of boys) are exploited every year in the multibillion-dollar sex industry, specifically prostitution and pornography.
The latest report on this matter published in December 2011 from UNICEF’s
Innocenti Research Centre says that despite offering more opportunities for education and information, ‘the internet has also amplified the scale and potential of threats to children.’
“The rapid growth of the online world has not created crimes involving sexual abuse and exploitation of children, but it has increased their scale and reach for potentially causing harm,” says UNICEF’s Director of the Office of Research at Innocenti, Gordon Alexander.
Findings from the report,
Child Safety Online: Global challenges and strategies, show that children from lower-income families and lower-income countries have a higher risk of vulnerability. The report suggests that children, in poorer countries like Nepal, India, the Philippines and Brazil, are more likely to use internet cafes which are identified as particularly unsafe places for children as they have the potential to expose them to adults who use pornography, to pornographic material, to solicitation (online and offline) or to drugs.
So whilst the digital divide between developed and developing countries has narrowed, presenting new opportunities for adults and children alike, it also poses a new risk to children in developing countries who are less digitally literate and much more likely to be exploited in cyber space.
It seems that lax laws and extreme poverty are conditions that provide the right breeding ground for child predators.
For instance, the Philippines has for some time existed as a haven for child pornography. A UNICEF report,
Child Pornography in the Philippines found that a combination of poverty, sex tourism, a known lenience towards prostitution and pornography and ineffective or non-existent laws makes innocent children easy prey.
It is scenarios like in the case of the Philippines that express those children with a relative lack of power need our help.
So what can be done to curb the growth of child pornography?
Luckily it is practical to help both potential and actual victims by supporting campaigns and organisations like UNICEF, that work to ensure children’s safety and rights are realised. UNICEF recognises that changes in legislation, policies, services and social norms can increase the protection of children at risk. It therefore works with a number of partners to strengthen child protection systems and promote positive social norms in order to prevent and respond to violence, exploitation and abuse directed at children.
UNICEF achieves this by engaging different government sectors as well as legislator’s civil society, community leaders, religious groups, the private sector, media, families and children themselves to raise awareness and address the issues associated with protecting children from harm. For more information,
read the full UNICEF report here.
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