Today (November 14, 2017) the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and The Fund to End Violence Against Children will be announcing a substantial financial award that will allow us - as one of the most successful hotlines for reporting online child abuse imagery in the world - to develop a further 30 Reporting Portals.
This is big news for us. We already have 17 of these IWF reporting solutions world-wide, 18 if you include Tanzania which we have already established under this fund. And, most significantly, the new additions to our online global family, will be set up in some of the least developed countries in Africa, Central America and Asia-Pacific regions.
At the IWF, we know that we are facing a massive global problem. The criminals who abuse legitimate internet services to upload horrific images of child sexual abuse don't recognise international borders, or barriers. You can't erect a fence (no matter how strong) to stop them and they're constantly looking for new ways, or technologies to avoid detection.
That's why it's become one of our goals to share the expertise and experience of our world class Hotline analysts, through a programme of IWF Reporting Portals. Our aims are two-fold; put simply, we want to make the internet a safer place for all users and we want to reach out to those people, who may stumble on child sexual abuse online, giving them somewhere to report. By doing just that, they can feel safe in the knowledge that not only will they be able to do this anonymously, but that they are also doing the right thing.
Now we know that there may be those who question the rationale behind providing online safety mechanisms for countries whose citizens could be experiencing hardship and poverty in their everyday lives. We live in a world of global disparity, of unevenness and inequality. But in terms of online safety, we feel that it's vital to equip the least developed countries with safety mechanisms, with a solution, before they are targeted because of their vulnerability.
We believe the desire to provide proven 'solutions' for the children and web-savvy citizens of these countries, is something we share with The Fund to End Violence Against Children.
Not only is this the right thing to do, it's also the right time to do it.
Our Hotline analysts are amongst the best in the world and our technology is developing at an incredible pace. But it's the human side of our work that provides the real context. It's hard to imagine the despair a child goes through when they are sexually abused. But can anyone fully understand the additional torment that victim suffers, when their horrific abuse is shared, and shared again, illegally online?
This is something no child should have to suffer - wherever they live in the world.
That knowledge is intolerable for some victims, either as children or as they reach adulthood. And that's why we work so hard at IWF to take down these images and why we are so proud at the announcement of this global grant which will allow us to reach out to some of the world's least developed countries with our Reporting Portals.
About the Fund to End Violence to Children:
The Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and its associated Fund accelerate actions to realise the commitments made in the SDGs by supporting those working to prevent and respond to violence, protect childhood and make societies safe for the world's most precious asset - its children. A multi-donor trust fund has been created to support activities to achieve the vision of the Partnership - a world in which every child grows up free from violence and exploitation. The Fund aims to prove through 'catalytic' investment that evidence based programming yields tangible results and there is an 'investment case' to be made. Internet Watch Foundation is one of the Fund's initial grantees focusing on online child sexual exploitation. The grant amount will total $448,875 (US dollars).
For more information www.end-violence.org