WHY IN NEWS?

We Protect Global Alliance recently released its Global Threat Assessment report 2021.

About:

• The report notes that, Child sexual abuse is a chronically underfunded issue.
• Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of child sexual exploitation and abuse online have increased.
• In the last two years, reporting of child sexual exploitation and online abuse cases has reached its highest level.
• According to “The Internet Watch Foundation”, there is an increase of 77% in child ‘self-generated’ sexual material in between 2019 to 2020. Such instances arose without any apparent external cause.
• As per report, currently, 37% children use tools to detect online grooming.

Online Grooming

Online grooming is the situation, in which someone befriends a child online, and builds up their trust in order to exploit them and cause them harm.

Recommendations made by report

Report suggests following measures to tackle the instances of sexual exploitation and abuse online:

1. Prioritise prevention activities against abuse online
2. Create safe online environments for children
3. Stakeholders, who are having a key role in protecting the children, should work together to improve the response.

We Protect Global Alliance

We Protect Global Alliance is a global movement of around 200 governments, private sector companies as well as civil society organisations who are working together to transform the global response to child sexual exploitation as well as abuse online.