Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative (ACSAI) and INHOPE have urged parents, citizens, and government bodies to join forces in combating online child sexual exploitation and abuse, by reporting perpetrators to appropriate authorities.
The charge was given at a roundtable discussion and the launch of the ACSAI INHOPE Internet Hotline for reporting child sexual exploitation and abuse for its removal (from the Internet).
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), online child sexual exploitation includes a wide range of behaviours and situations. Most commonly this includes grooming, live streaming, consuming child sexual abuse material, and coercing and blackmailing children for sexual purposes. This includes an adult engaging a child in a chat about sexual acts, which is illegal in Nigeria.
The digital age offers unparalleled opportunities for education, entertainment and connection. But with the proliferation of cyber-technology comes the risk of exposure to illegal, inappropriate or harmful digital content.
International conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography of 2000, enumerate children’s rights and clarify the obligation of states to protect children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse.
Speaking at the roundtable event, Commissioner of Police, NPF Cyber Crime Centre, CP Ifeanyi Uche explained that malicious individuals target children online, build their trust, manipulate them to exchange explicit contents online and
use these contents to blackmail and control the victims for their purpose.
The Head of Network Expansion and Global Partnerships at INHOPE, Samantha Woolfe, discussed how INHOPE is delighted that Nigeria is establishing the second hotline on the continent of Africa in Nogeria. She informed the stakeholders that INHOPE hotlines provide a national and an international response to fighting CSAM, working closely with national law enforcement agencies, and international ones such as INTERPOL. INHOPE typically works with a local partner, often a CSO sharing their knowledge and experience in establishing hotlines.
INHOPE supports it’s 55 hotlines in the rapid identification and removal of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) from the digital world.
Samantha Woolfe added that their vision is a world free of Child Sexual Abuse Material online.
INHOPE is the umbrella organization for 55 hotlines around the world, saying that hotline is a place where public can report Child sexual abuse material.
“This week, we are proud to launch a hotline in Nigeria, our 55th hotline.”
INHOPE said it focuses on responding to criminally illegal content and activity.
Her words: “INHOPE is the leading organisation removing online CSAM and an umbrella organization for hotlines around the world. A hotline is a place to which the public can report child sexual abuse material (CSAM). We want to make sure that in every country around the world, all citizens have the ability to report online child sexual abuse material that they come across online for its swift removal. We make sure that wherever in the world a report is made and wherever it is hosted, it will be removed, and if the content is of an image not previously seen, INTERPOL and national law enforcement agencies to identify victims.
“So if I’m sitting at my computer and I come across child sexual abuse material, either a photo or a video, I am able to report it in my country, in my local language and anonymously. INHOPE analysts are trained by INTERPOL and INHOPE to analyse and receive the reports from the public, they verify if they are child sexual abuse material or not and then forward to the
“Obviously, there’s a question of supply and demand. So the less this content is on the Internet, the less we will hopefully see of it, the less access indeed.”
She added: “I’ve been really heartened by meetings with ministries in the last day or two. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had meetings with the National Communications Commission, with the Ministry of Justice, with the Department of Education, all of these different and NAPTIP and also the Cybercrime Centre of Excellence to understand how they are already in fact combating. Working together to create a strategy that combats child sexual abuse material online. So in fact you’ve got the National Child Online Protection and Policy Strategy that will be launched later this year by NCC and in fact that is already taking into into account all aspects of how to respond to online child sexual abuse material.”
According to Program Director, Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative, Juliet Ohahuru-Obiora, “We are very fortunate that it actually aligned with the launch of our Internet hotline. Internet Hotline is a platform where you can report child sexual abuse material that is what we call child pornographic materials but in in the sense that as an Internet hotline we to facilitate the reporting and removal of this materials online.
“I am the program director for Action against child sexual abuse initiative and then 90% of our work because we do work with women but we work more with children just like our names goes for. But of course you cannot separate women from children in Africa at large.
“We are collaborating, we’re commemorating and celebrating the launch of our hotline in conjunction with a round table that we are holding with major stakeholders because we’re having these conversations now we’re having this is a new and great area, a lot of people don’t really know what is happening.
“We’re having conversations around this issue with our local stakeholders to start building structures and building platforms that can enable us to combat online child sexual exploitation.”