Countering Child Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse Online

Urges Member States to criminalize child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, including child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online, allowing for the prosecution of perpetrators, to grant law enforcement agencies appropriate powers and to provide tools to identify perpetrators and victims and effectively combat child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse;

Also urges Member States to strengthen, consistent with their domestic legal frameworks, their efforts to combat cybercrime in relation to child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, including when committed online;

Calls upon Member States that are parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography5 to implement their legal obligations;

Urges Member States to increase public awareness of the serious nature of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse materials, how such materials constitute sexual offences against children and how the production, distribution and consumption of such materials put more children at risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, including by normalizing the conduct depicted in such materials and fuelling the demand for such materials;

Also urges Member States to take legislative or other measures, in accordance with domestic law, to facilitate the detection by Internet service and access providers and other relevant entities of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse materials and to ensure, in compliance with domestic law, the reporting of such materials to the relevant authorities and their removal by Internet service and access providers and other relevant entities, including in conjunction with law enforcement agencies;

Encourages Member States, in accordance with domestic law, to appropriately resource investigations into and prosecutions of crimes involving child sexual exploitation or sexual abuse online;

Also encourages Member States to proactively share information on best practices and to take action to combat child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, including by seizing or removing child sexual abuse materials from the Internet and reducing the time taken do so, consistent with domestic laws;

Further encourages Member States to involve government institutions responsible for telecommunications and data protection policies and the information and communications technology industry in strengthening national coordination to counter child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse online;

Encourages Member States to involve relevant government institutions and the private sector in their efforts to facilitate the reporting and tracing of suspicious financial transactions, with the aim of detecting, deterring and combating child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online;

Also encourages Member States to keep an appropriate balance between the development and implementation of privacy protection policies and efforts to identify and report child sexual abuse materials and child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online;

Further encourages Member States to develop effective, evidence-based crime prevention measures and to implement such measures as part of overall crime prevention strategies to reduce the risk of children being subjected to sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online;

Encourages Member States to produce, where appropriate, information and analyses to inform risk assessments on child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online and the development of effective mitigation measures, including by collecting relevant quantitative and qualitative data, disaggregated by age, gender and other relevant factors, as appropriate, and also encourages Member States to mainstream a gender perspective into their research on and analysis of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online;

Urges Member States to establish and implement public policies and to proactively share information on best practices, including on support programmes for victims and the mainstreaming of a gender perspective, in order to protect and defend children from child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, including online, and the non-consensual, exploitative circulation of material depicting victims;

Encourages Member States to identify and support victims of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online through the provision of access to evidence-based, quality programmes, care and counselling for their physical, psychological and social recovery, as well as psychological care, trauma counselling, rehabilitation and social reintegration, ensuring and maintaining the protection of the rights of affected children, the privacy of victims and the confidentiality of their reporting, with assistance from all relevant stakeholders;

Requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to assist Member States, upon request, in developing and implementing measures to increase access to justice and protection, including through domestic legislative and other measures for victims of child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online, bearing in mind child- and gender-sensitive procedures, to obtain a just and timely remedy for violations of their rights;

Invites Member States to exchange best practices in the reporting of child sexual exploitation and abuse online, including reporting indicators, and ways and means to enhance public awareness of these reporting mechanisms;

Calls upon those States that have not done so to consider ratifying or acceding to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime3 and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,⁹ taking into account the role of those instruments in the fight against trafficking in children, including for the purpose of sexual exploitation;

Calls upon Member States, in accordance with domestic legal frameworks and applicable international law, to strengthen international cooperation to combat child sexual abuse and exploitation online through, where appropriate and among others, mutual legal assistance and extradition, as well as police-to-police and agency-to-agency cooperation, in order to counter such crimes and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice and victims are identified, while respecting the right of children to privacy;

Urges Member States to demonstrate their continued work and efforts to further strengthen international cooperation in the fight against child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online, including by ensuring that child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online are comprehensively considered within the context and based on the workplan of the Expert Group to Conduct a Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime, which provides a valuable forum for discussions on cybercrime;

Encourages Member States to contribute resources to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, including the Global Programme on Cybercrime, in order to counter child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse online;

Invites Member States and other donors to provide extrabudgetary resources for the implementation of the relevant paragraphs of the present resolution, in accordance with the rules and procedures of the United Nations.