CHILDREN: NGOs Plan to Track Down Internet Paedophiles

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 1999 (IPS) - A coalition of international non- governmental organisations (NGOs) plans to establish a “global electronic watchtower” to track down paedophiles who navigate the Internet in search of sex.

“We don’t want to fight the Internet. We want the Internet to help us make cyberspace safe for children,” says Homayra Sellier, president of ‘Innocence in Danger’, a newly-formed world citizen’s movement dedicated to protecting children from sexual abuse.

Sellier says the abuse of the global information highway was a problem of international proportions touching every social class in all regions of the world.

Many of the children caught up in the sex trade contract AIDS – the deadly Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, she says. In South Asia alone, there are more than a million such cases.

She points out that that North America and several European countries play a key role in the production, distribution and consumption of child pornography worldwide.

“While child abusers had existed before the Internet, they had previously been isolated and lonely. Today, the Internet had made it possible for them to communicate easily with each other,” Sellier says.

By simple keyword searches, it is possible to locate more than 8,000 sites dealing with paedophile subjects.

Sellier says her organisation – along with several National Action Committees in individual countries – is in the process of creating a world electronic programme to be shared with other NGOs to monitor paedophiles.

Currently, National Action Committees exist in Switzerland, France, Belgium, the US, Argentina, Colombia, Panama and Italy, while Germany and Sweden are in the process of setting up their own committees.

Some of the NGOs collaborating in the project include the American Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the Foundation for Children and the Family in Greece and the Regional Associatiion for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect based in Kenya.

The NGOs are being supported by several international organisations fighting child abuse. They include the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the World Tourism Organisation, the European Commission and the Council of Europe.

Parry Aftab, who heads the US National Action Committee, told reporters that, with the rapid growth of the worldwide web, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of websites – from 100 in 1993 to 3.8 million today.

The widespread use of the Internet has resulted in about 17 million children being on-line in the United States – nearly half the nation’s estimated 35 million children.

On a worldwide basis, crimes in cyberspace cannot easily be distinguished in geographical terms.

Aftab says the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has discovered that nearly every day, at least one person travels across state boundaries – via cyberspace – to lure a child they had met on the Internet.

“Children had to be educated to know how to use the Internet safely, and not to share personal information,” she adds.

In January, UNESCO hosted a meeting of experts on child pornography and paedophilia on the Internet. The final report released after the meeting said the fact that crimes committed on the Internet are not restricted by national borders makes many national and conventional laws on child abuse and child pornography either weak of obsolete.

Most national legislation on child pornography is based mainly, if not exclusively, on print as the medium, with an actual child as a model.

The UNESCO study shows most laws have not yet dealt with digitally generated images, morphing, and the mere possession of illegal pornographic materials using any audio visual support.

“Law enforcement often is also handicapped, as few judiciary and police service throughout the world are technically as well- equipped as the pornographers and cybercriminals.’ the report says.

It also warns that, while seeking to protect children from the dangers of the Internet, “it is also important to distinguish and punish the real criminals, and not destroy the tools, the new communication and information technologies.”

Like any other communications technology, the Internet is only a means, a carrier. “Despite its creative advantages, the Internet can also wreak havoc on the lives of our young children,” the report says.

UNESCO says it has an ethical mandate to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image, a wider and better-balanced disseimination of information at international, as well as national levels, without any obstacle to the freedom of expression.