3.5 Developing a national strategy
🎯 Why is a national strategy on child online protection essential?
In order to protect children from online risks while promoting access to information and the safe use of technology and the internet, it is necessary to develop, run, and assess an inclusive, multifaceted child online protection strategy. This can ensure coordinated action and cooperation across all levels. For a strategy to be effective, it should have targeted measures and activities, including financial and human resources to implement the strategy .
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), together with expert partners, has produced a number of guidelines on child online safety as part of its Child Online Protection (COP) initiative (within its Global Cybersecurity Agenda, a framework for international collaboration on cyberspace). The special value of these guidelines is that they were written for specific stakeholder groups, and address those stakeholders’ particular roles and needs.
In particular, the guidelines for policymakers offer governments and policymakers ‘a user-friendly and flexible framework that supports the development of targeted and effective measures for child online protection at the national level’.
📚 Resources
The ITU Guidelines on Child Online Protection are a comprehensive set of recommendations for all relevant stakeholders on how to contribute to the development of a safe and empowering online environment for children and young people.
There are four sets of 2020 Child Online Protection (COP) Guidelines:
- Guidelines aimed at policymakers;
- Guidelines for the industry;
- Guidelines for parents and educators; and
- Guidelines aimed at children.
🎯 What are the steps, requirements, and measures that need to be considered when formulating a national strategy on online child safety?
From a practical point of view, the ITU Guidelines on Child Online Protection for Policymakers provide a ‘national checklist’ of requirements and measures that can address the risks, aimed at helping policymakers with planning a national strategy.
The checklist is based on several key areas. Table 1, reproduced from the guidelines, describes a number of factors that policymakers need to keep in mind.
| # | Key areas for consideration | |
| Legal framework | 1 | Review the existing legal framework to determine that all necessary legal powers exist to enable law enforcement and other relevant agencies to protect persons under the age of 18 online on all internet-enabled platforms. |
| 2 | Establish, mutatis mutandis, that any act against a child which is illegal in the real world is illegal online and that the online data protection and privacy rules for children are also adequate. | |
| Regulatory framework | 3 | Consider regulatory policy development. This may include a self- or co-regulatory policy development as well as a full regulatory framework. The self- or co-regulatory model might include the formulation and publication of codes of good practice or basic online safety expectations, both in terms of helping to engage, coordinate or orchestrate and sustain the involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and in terms of enhancing the speed with which appropriate responses to technological change can be formulated and put into effect. A regulatory model might define the expectations and obligations across stakeholders and enshrine within a legal context. Penalties for policy infringement may also be considered. |
| Reporting – illegal content | 4 | Ensure that a mechanism is established and is widely promoted to provide readily understood means for reporting the variety of illegal content found on the internet. For example, a national hotline, which has the capacity to respond rapidly and have illegal material removed or rendered inaccessible. Industry should have mechanisms to identify, block, and remove abuse of children online, taking all services relevant to their organisations. |
| Reporting – user concerns | 5 | Industry should provide users with the opportunity to report concerns and issues to their users and respond accordingly. |
| Actors and stakeholders | 6 | Engage all the relevant stakeholders with an interest in online child protection, in particular: Government agencies Law enforcement Social services organisations Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other Electronic Service Providers (ESPs) Mobile phone network providers Public Wi-Fi providers Other relevant hi-tech companies Teacher organisations Parent organisations Children and young people Child protection and other relevant NGOs Academic and research community Owners of internet cafés and other public access providers e.g. libraries, telecentres, ‘PC Bangs’, and online gaming centres, etc. |
| Research | 7 | Undertake research of the spectrum of national actors and stakeholders to determine their opinions, experiences, concerns, and opportunities with regards to child online protection. This should also appreciate the extent of any responsibility together with existing or planned activities to protect children online. |
| Education digital literacy and competency | 8 | Develop digital literacy features as part of any national school curriculum that is age appropriate and applicable to all children. |
| Educational resources | 9 | Draw on the knowledge and experience of all stakeholders and develop internet safety messages and materials which reflect local cultural norms and laws, and ensure that these are efficiently distributed and appropriately presented to all key target audiences. Consider enlisting the aid of the mass media in promoting awareness messages. Develop materials which emphasise the positive and empowering aspects of the internet for children and young people and avoid fear-based messaging. Promote positive and responsible forms of online behaviour. Consider developing resources to help parents assess their own children’s online safety and learn about how to minimise risks and maximise potential for their own family through targeted education. |
| Child protection | 10 | Ensure that universal and systematic child protection mechanisms are in place that oblige all those working with children (social care, health, schools, etc.) to identify, respond, and report incidents of abuse and harm that occur online. |
| National awareness | 11 | Organise national awareness campaigns to create the opportunity to universally highlight child online protection issues. It may be beneficial to harness global campaigns such as Safer Internet Day to build a campaign. |
| Tools, services, and settings | 12 | Consider the role of device settings, technical tools (such as filtering programmes), and child protection apps and settings that can help. Encourage users to take responsibility for their devices by encouraging updates of the operating system, plus the use of suitable security software and apps. |
Table 1. Developing a national child online protection strategy: A national checklist – Key areas for consideration. Source: The table has been reproduced from the ITU Guidelines on Child Online Protection for Policymakers 2020
💡 Reflection point
Does your country have a national strategy for child online protection? Or is it in the process of developing one, or updating an existing one? If yes, which stakeholder has been the driving force behind it? And which key areas are the most challenging to tackle?
If not, what has been the main setback for not having a national strategy? Who would/could be the driving force behind such an initiative?