Page 7 - SAMENA Trends - August 2020

FEATURED SAMENA TRENDS

In late 2019, ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Now, in 2020, the ITU has issued Guidelines for industry
Sustainable Development launched the Child Online Safety on Child Online Protection (COP), with the aim to provide a
Report with actionable recommendations on how to make useful, flexible and user-friendly frameworks for both the
the Internet safer for children. private sector and the governments to responsibly protect
the CYP users online. The Guidelines are also aimed at
In June 2020, ITU launched the ITU 2020 COP Guidelines. establishing the foundation for safer and more secure use
Dr. Rubinstein, President and CEO of Childhood USA and of Internet-based services and associated technologies for
a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for today’s children and future generations, especially following
Sustainable Development, was one of the speakers at the the Covid-19 crisis, which has utterly transformed the online
launch. Childhood USA has actively worked with ITU and its access and data usage landscape.
partners to develop these new guideline. The UN Broadband
Commission’s report on Child Online Safety: Minimizing
the Risk of Violence, Abuse and Exploitation Online and the “We need collective action and zero tolerance
accompanying Universal Declaration on Child Online Safety
are a call to action to prioritize child safety online. to child sexual abuse and exploitation online.
All children deserve to benefit from this
Call for Action: The Child Online Safety Universal Declaration
can be signed at www.childonlinesafety.org transformational technology for education
and entertainment and it is our collective
Cross-Industry Collaboration is a Necessity responsibility to protect them online. By
With regard to protecting children’s rights online, industries need signing the declaration all the stakeholders
to work together to strike a careful balance between children’s
right to protection and their right to access to information and sign up for being child protectors instead of
freedom of expression. This calls for the private sector and the enabling the abuse”, says Dr. Rubinstein of
governments to prioritize measures to protect children and young
people online that are targeted and are not unduly restrictive, Childood USA.
either for the child or other users. This also necessitates
promoting digital citizenship among children and young people, Digi-world activities are available in three local languages, which
and developing products and platforms that facilitate children’s consist of Thai, Urdu, and Bengali. The locally contextualized
positive use of ICTs. content and offline activities enable greater participation in
accordance with the ITU guidelines. Furthermore, Digi-world
Example of Implementation of COP Guidelines adequately follows the ITU guidelines regarding privacy details.
One example of a program, which adheres to the COP guidelines, No personal information is required by the participants, apart
is Digi-world, launched by the Telenor Group, which is a learning from a simple username and password. The data, which is
resource and targets children aged 5-16. The resource aims collected through the usage of the program and the application,
to build children's capacity in online protection and safer use is internal and analyzed through the help of Google analytics. The
of the Internet through a series of interactive worksheets and information remains confidential. The worksheets can easily be
challenges. Certifications are offered at the end of the program downloaded, and a separate glossary exists in the application
to encourage and incentivize the participants. The ease of access to assist parents and children understand the meanings behind
and accessibility of Digi-world is based on the ITU guidelines. Also, some difficult words.

7 AUGUST 2020