RIGHTS: EU Urged to Combat Child Pornography on Internet

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jun 5 2003 (IPS) - The European Union needs to step up measures to combat child pornography on the internet, according to members of civil society groups.

A group of international NGOs (non-governmental organisations) say that the EU needs to enforce stricter guidelines to curb the access to and practice of internet-related sexual exploitation of children.

Interest groups from all sectors of the computer industry, including on-line child protection experts and representatives of children’s organisations, expressed their concerns at the public hearing ‘Child safety on the Internet – Identifying best practice: how has industry risen to the challenge?’ before the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC).

The EESC is a forum that represents socio-economic organisations of the 15-member states of the EU.

Participants welcomed the European Commission’s recent extension of its Safer Internet Action Plan (SIAP), which aims to tackling the controversial issue of illegal, harmful and racist content on the Internet.

But they insisted that the plan was not enough and that a definite framework needs to be introduced.

The SIAP was extended last month for a further two years until December 2004. The Commission, the executive arm of the EU, also extended the scope of the Plan to cover new on-line technologies. These include mobile and broadband content, on-line games and all forms of real time communications such as chat rooms.

Speaking on behalf of the EESC, Committee member Ann Davis said that a legislative framework with supporting codes needed to be established instead of the self-regulation favoured by the Commission.

"The EESC proposed the idea of an Internet Action Plan and has supported its development. But it has been sceptical about whether self-regulation will be enough to spread best practice throughout the industry. We need to find a way to improve safety issues," she said.

With 10 new, mainly eastern European, member states joining the EU in May 2004, many civil society groups said that more needs to be done to address child pornography in these countries.

They recommended that greater prominence should be given to issues of child protection and child pornography in Central and Eastern European countries. They also proposed increased co-operation between these countries and the Europol, the European Police Office.

NGOs also insisted on the need to develop filtering and rating systems, which regulate children’s access to the internet and better education for parents.

Responding to the concerns of the civil society groups, Richard Swetenham, head of the SIAP at the Information Society Directorates-General, welcomed the input from the NGOs and said that the Commission was faced with two important tasks.

"We welcome the input from the Committee and believe that interaction between actors in various areas is critical to this subject. There is a definite role for the European Union in this issue and we will continue to assume it," he said.

"The Commission is now faced with two tasks – the first is to implement the extension of the two-year extension immediately and at the same time we must put in place a proposal for a follow-up in 2005," he continued.

Swetenham encouraged the EESC and civil society groups to provide input for a new programme and insisted that swift and concise proposals would be welcome.

The meeting on Thursday followed calls to the EU from the children’s rights group, Save the Children, to increase cross-border co-operation and stricter legislation at national level.

The report ‘Child Pornography and Internet-related Sexual Exploitation of Children’ published June 4, examined issues such as the trafficking of children and the effects that child pornography has on abused children.

The organisation insists that the EU’s Framework Decision on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, adopted in February, is fully implemented by member states to ensure that clear child protection policies are established.

The framework includes a series of measures to be adopted by the EU’s member states to ensure that offenders are severely punished in their countries.

Although Vernon Jones, Programme Manager for Save the Children Denmark and author of the report, welcomes the progress made by the EU so far, he insists that more needs to be done to combat child pornography in individual member states.

"Child pornography on the internet has clearly expanded dramatically in recent years. All European countries must therefore increase their individual and collective efforts through collaboration, to fight this despicable crime which knows no border," he told IPS.

A range of surveys presented by the civil society groups at the hearing provide disturbing statistics.

Approximately one third of girls are harassed on-line and there are an estimated one million pornographic images of children on the web.

Three quarters of children in one study said that they see things that are "nasty, upsetting, rude, or violent" and one in four children said that they would not tell an adult if they had a negative experience on the internet.

Child pornography is defined as the production, distribution, diffusion, acquisition or possession of pornography involving children. This may also include an adult who seems to be less than 18 years of age or realistic virtual imagery.

Pornography on the internet is available in different formats, ranging from pictures and short animated movies, to sound files and stories. The internet also makes it possible to discuss sex, see live sex acts, and arrange sexual activities from computer screens.