A Global Call to Protect Children Online
At an affiliate event of Digital@UNGA, held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York, leaders from child protection, technology, AI, philanthropy, policy and frontline practice came together to discuss how law, policy and technology can create safer digital environments for children.
​In his keynote address, Bhuwan Ribhu, called for stronger prevention, reporting and accountability to protect children online. He also launched the Centre for Legal Action and Behaviour Change’s (C-LAB) new report, Prevention by Design, and proposed an International Day for the Elimination of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitative Material.
​Drawing on legal developments across 40 countries, 10 regional and multilateral frameworks and 12 UN instruments, Prevention by Design sets out a five part framework for building child safety into digital environments. It covers age and access rules, safer platform design, privacy preserving age assurance, reporting and regulatory accountability, and participation, equity, digital literacy and periodic review. The report builds on Just Rights for Children’s work on digital child protection, taking forward its focus on preventing harm through stronger law, policy and technology.
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The panel brought together Ethna Ghosh, India Partnerships Lead, Renaissance Philanthropy; Vaishnavi J, Founder & Principal, Vyanams Strategies; Dr Safinah Ali, Assistant Professor, NYU Steinhardt; Rachna Tyagi, General Counsel, Just Rights for Children; and Deepa Karthikeyan, Co Founder & Partner, Athena Infonomics. The discussion explored children's legal capacity, platform accountability, Prevention by Design and mandatory reporting, highlighting the need for law, policy and technology to anticipate risk and protect children before harm occurs.
"In just two years, Just Rights for Children has placed the full arc of child protection in the digital ecosystem before India and the world to act on, from a child’s legal capacity to contract, to the architectural accountability of platforms, Prevention by Design and mandatory reporting by intermediaries. Together, these questions are shaping a new architecture of child protection for the digital age.
Rachan Tyagi
"The goal is to serve a more age-appropriate experience for the child on the platform. We have age-related checks, guidance, and contextualization in many offline spaces, whether it's at school or whether it's when you go to a store and try to buy something.
Vaishnavi J
"The need of the hour is to have these conversations – bringing parents into these conversations for them to know about what the harm is. On a technical level, we need to design better safeguards, and we need to put in place systems that will actually enforce corporations to take the onus of implementing those safeguards. That also means bringing everyone in the room and designing with corporate interests on one hand, parental interests and child safety on the other."
Dr. Safiya Ali
“With AI, people are very interested in buying the tool for the nonprofit or whoever they're going to send it to, but nobody wants to pay to train you on that AI because that's 'admin cost.' They'll just give you the tool and say, 'Now you figure it out.' The tool is not the problem; the problem is how you use the tool. AI changes every six months, which means that you have to constantly train yourself, and somebody has to constantly pay for that. That's where philanthropy comes in.”
Ethna Ghosh