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Month: December 2023

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Safe Online Progress Snapshot 2023

Safe Online Progress Snapshot 2023

A year of progress, challenges and key milestones for Safe Online

2023 was a year of big strides on the digital landscape characterised by the rapid evolution of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and immersive platforms. However, these technological innovations are also bringing forth new and evolving challenges, impacting some of our most vulnerable, particularly children and young people.  

The challenges to children’s online safety have never been more significant, and demand an unprecedented response. Our work, now more critical than ever, has risen to meet these challenges. From strategic investments to critical research and advocacy, Safe Online has been at the frontline of the battle to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse. 

This year also marks the beginning of Safe Online’s independent journey and our transition from the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children. Our new role as a global funding vehicle enables us to renew our commitment to our core purpose; to protect and empower children and young people throughout the digital world.

Celebrating our investments and innovations!

This year we launched a US $10 million global open call to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse and awarded an additional US $5.5 million to generate crucial data and evidence building on learnings generated in previous rounds, from tech solutions to systems strengthening and policy development.​

We welcomed 10 new trailblazing grantees into the Tech Solutions fold with innovative projects and awarded 4 new projects as part of our Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund to advance the journey from research labs to the frontlines of tech. 

Since 2016, Safe Online has been at the forefront of this global battle against online CSEA, investing over US $77 million in over 100 projects across 85+ countries. Through our investments, Safe Online is rewriting the future of online safety. 

Disrupting Harm's Global Leap: Flagship research project on online CSEA expands to 11 new countries!

This year, 11 new countries: Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Serbia and Tunisia announced the implementation of Disrupting Harm in their respective countries. This second round of investment by Safe Online (totalling USD $7.5m) will expand Disrupting Harm to 4 more regions and enable robust research on online child sexual exploitation and abuse, conducted by Disrupting Harm partners ECPAT International, INTERPOL and UNICEF Innocenti with support from national expert organisations. By 2025, each participating country will be armed with evidence-informed action plans, tailored to fortify their defences against online child exploitation.

Key Moments and Strategic Opportunities

In 2023, Safe Online leveraged over 60 strategic opportunities including high-level events, convenings and meetings to elevate the profile of child online safety, placing it at the forefront of political and sectoral discussions and ensuring it remains a priority across various levels and sectors.

Highlights include: 

Fostering collaboration to tackle online CSEA: In September, Tech Coalition and Safe Online organised a research fund convening in San Francisco, California bringing together 11 grantees and 25 representatives from the tech industry, creating a platform for sharing knowledge and fostering technical collaboration. The convening took place on the margins of the Stanford Trust & Safety Research Conference on 28-29 September 2023 where Safe Online organised a session with research grantees, sharing the lessons learned from the Research Fund and promoting the insights from research and data on online CSEA.

Safe Digital Futures for Children: Aligning Global Agendas Safe Online’s session, attended by key government partners from Australia, France, Ghana, and the United States of America, international organisations and technical experts, at the Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, Japan sparked crucial conversations on  fragmentation in the digital landscape and emphasised the necessity for evidence-based research and data to bridge gaps across various global digital agendas, including cybersecurity, child online safety, and tech-facilitated gender-based violence. 

In partnership with the French Children Online Protection Lab and the WeProtect Global Alliance, Safe Online organised the Safe Digital Futures for Children: Data for Change event in November in Paris, France, in which over 50 technical experts participated. The event strengthened the conversation on the availability and quality of data related to online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) and brought together a community of experts to build on the existing work towards a more reliable, comparable, and comprehensive data ecosystem on online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA).

Safe Online participated in the Paris Peace Forum in a session led by Ambassador Henri Verdier, Ambassador for Digital Affairs, France and attended by Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Digital Transitions and Telecommunications, France and other experts. Safe Online Executive Director, Marija Manojlovic advocated for fortified child-centric digital prevention and response mechanisms to online child sexual exploitation and abuse. 

A Milestone Moment at the G7 Meet in Mito, Japan: Safe Online’s Call to Action

As the year drew to a close, Safe Online stepped onto the global stage again at the prestigious G7 Security and Interior Ministers’ Meet in Mito, Japan. Safe Online’s lead, Marija Manojlovic, urged the G7 nations to unite in their efforts against online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) by boosting international funding, harmonising legislations and standards and advancing safety technology.

Innovative Partnerships -Forging an Alliance for a Safer Digital Future

Safe Online this year formalised a groundbreaking partnership with the French Children Online Protection Lab. This collaboration will unite the expertise, resources and passions of both organisations to forge a more secure online world for children globally. 

As part of the partnership, Safe Online and the Children Online Protection Lab will align our governance structures and support an exciting series of pilot projects where Safe Online will leverage its existing infrastructure to support and enhance the Lab’s experimentations.

Safe Online joins the Lanzarote Committee: 

This year marks another significant milestone for Safe Online, as we proudly joined the esteemed Lanzarote Committee as an Observer. This collaboration opened a new chapter in our relentless pursuit to combat the growing threat of online CSEA and we remain strongly committed to continue working with key stakeholders to transform the capacity of national, regional and global systems to combat the escalating threat of online CSEA and the opportunity of closely collaborating with the Lanzarote Committee.  

New Safe Online Brand!

And finally, this year, Safe Online launched our new brand, a significant milestone in our ongoing mission to create a safer digital world for children and young people.

We invite you to view our brand video and learn more about our renewed commitment: Safe Online’s Brand Video. 

Images: © Safe Online, UNICEF

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Recap – Safe digital futures for children: Data for change

October 23, 2024

In October 2024, the Data for Change community gathered in London for a two-day technical workshop, bringing together over 40 experts from government, tech companies, civil society, and academia. The event focused on strengthening the global data ecosystem for online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) and fostering collaborative solutions to improve the use of data to protect children online.

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Tech Industry and Researchers come together to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse

Tech Industry and Researchers come together to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse

Promoting action from research

2024 Collaboration Announcement

We’re excited to announce that Safe Online and Tech Coalition’s partnership is entering its 4th year! With a generous USD $500,000 from the Tech Coalition, we’re set to enhance the impact of 13 research projects that play a crucial role in developing resources and applications for the tech industry. This effort is part of our ongoing commitment to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse. 

Safe Online’s collaboration with the Tech Coalition addresses a crucial gap in the online child safety ecosystem for research funding that is aligned with industry trends, policymaking, and practical applications. Over the next year Safe Online will aim to maximize the impact of the current investments and build on this pivotal  partnership with the Tech Coalition.

The main aim of the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund is to use the research to impact tech industry practices and steer technological developments. We do this not only through our research but also by organizing strategic events and engagements, to provide space and platform for the tech industry and researchers to share insights from the research projects. These events are key to translating these insights into products and practices that can significantly enhance the protection of children online. See an example of a recent convening below. 

Why we came together – 2023 Research Fund Convening

More than 45 participants, a combination of researchers supported by the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund and tech professionals, came together in San Francisco to discuss emerging findings from research and actions that the tech industry can take to protect children online. 

What we covered

The day started with a public panel to share insights about this unique initiative and hear from collaborators who have made this work possible. Made up of industry members, independent experts and researchers, the panel was united in its call for more cross-sectoral collaboration, the need for greater inclusion of underrepresented geographies and groups, and the real impacts that the research projects from this fund are already having.

Marija Manojlovic, Executive Director, Safe Online made the exciting announcement that the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund is granting 4 awards to further accelerate the work of organisations from the first cohort of grantees. The additional funds are for a duration of 12 months and will support projects to extend research to applications such as piloting solutions, technical collaboration and innovation efforts.  Read more here

We then dove straight into the research findings with a lightning round of presentations followed by a marketplace that gave tech professionals the chance to talk to researchers and understand what the findings mean for them. 

In the afternoon we took a deep dive into the research themes with small groups unpacking the opportunities and challenges around grooming, user reporting, prevention and wellness and deterrence and offender behavior. We ended the day focusing on action – linking up researchers with tech professionals working in operations, policy and product to discuss how to continue to strengthen the links across sectors to better protect children online.

How the day went

Overwhelmingly, participants were excited about the new and strengthened connections with other experts working on the issue –both within the research and tech communities and across both sectors.

“Meeting the other researchers and hearing about their work was perhaps the most useful because it made me feel like part of a movement for change - and we can all do with feeling a bit of unity in this field”
- Amanda Third, Young & Resilient Research Centre, University of Western Australia
“Valuable connections were made for professional networking and information sharing - we solved mutual problems together!”
- Tech industry participant feedback from post-workshop survey

The research projects range from linguistic analysis that can track patterns of grooming, to understanding more about perpetrator behaviors, to increased evidence around parents’ awareness of online abuse. The Research Fund has a focus on promoting action, making it even more valuable to bring researchers together with tech professionals. 

“I found it practical and action-oriented. I think there was a very fluid dialogue where we managed to put everyone's needs and work into perspective”
- Lina María Saldarriaga, Universidad de los Andes

There was a high level of consensus on the day about ensuring that research in this area is practical, actionable and is fast paced enough to make a change in the tech industry.

“Researchers could reflect on methods and think about the minimum viable product – a gold standard works in a vacuum but not real-world contexts. What matters is what’s making a difference.”
- Group discussion on policy

There is a lot of enthusiasm and energy to continue collaboration through a community of practice and individual connections that were made on the day. 

Overall, we received incredible feedback from the attendees at the convening. Both research grantees and tech industry participants appreciated the chance to learn, exchange ideas, and have open and honest discussions.  Participants highlighted the need for more such events bringing together researchers and tech partners to share learning, and to receive tailored research insights at regular intervals in order to  grow and strengthen this unique new community of practice.

We want to build on the enthusiasm from the day and keep the momentum going. As a next step, the TC Safe Online Research Fund will keep working to set up effective ways to share findings from research, increase researchers’ knowledge of how different platforms work, promote collaboration and most importantly action.

The Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund is investing in knowledge and research to end online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). The Tech Coalition and Safe Online joined hands in 2020 to collectively work to support knowledge and research towards ending online harm. Going into its 4th year, the Fund is continuing its focus on innovative research that produces actionable insights to impact product and policy development, with a priority given to research that can help inform the technology industry’s approach to combating online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Image: © UNICEF:UN355768

See more stories from our family of grantees
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Policy Proposal 3

May 13, 2023

As part of Together to #ENDviolence, experts from across the End Violence community came together to prepare a prioritized set of policy proposals to end violence against children. The result is six game-changing policy proposals, backed by evidence and research on what works to protect children.

Read More »

Recap blog- 2024 Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund Convening

October 22, 2024

The Tech Coalition and Safe Online were proud to host the 2024 Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund Convening in London on October 1. Over 50 attendees were present, representing all 13 grant projects from the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund as well as more than a dozen leading tech companies. The Convening successfully combined research insights with industry expertise to drive outcomes that will protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse.

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Reflections: Safe Digital Futures for Children – Data for Change

Reflections: Safe Digital Futures for Children – Data for Change

Envisioning a digital world with the rights of children at the core

It has been a month since Safe Online together with the French Online Child Protection Laboratory and WeProtect Global Alliance met in Paris, France to host the second Safe Digital Futures for Children: Data for Change event.

Safe Online’s experts Serena Tommasino and Natalie Shoup came together to reflect on the event, what the initiative means for the child online safety community and what success looks like.

Q: What does “Safe Digital Futures for Children and Young People” mean?

Natalie: When we came up with the name, we were trying to reflect on alignment of all digital harms against children and a proactive way of building the future, building many futures, actually. We were trying to include the diversity of children’s experiences in the various ways of imagining our future. This also goes back to our own Safe Online mission – and the fact that digital is not necessarily just online. So, for me, Safe Digital Futures was getting at all the different threads we were trying to pull together

Serena: For me, the name is about building the backbone and infrastructure of a safe digital world for all children and young people.  Connectivity is growing and eventually all children will be connected or immersed in digital environments. We are heading towards a future where terms like offline and online will not make sense anymore – we will be immersed in the digital world, and we will not think about it as such. In fact, children of this generation have already made this transition.

The name, therefore, refers to the future digital world we need! A place designed with children’s safety in mind, especially the safety of the most vulnerable groups of children and young people. Today the digital world is designed by and for adults, and this is why we need to envision a future digital world that enables children to navigate with strong and age-appropriate safeguards to prevent risks and threats of violence.

Q: Why is data relevant for a safe digital future?

Serena: The design is the result, but how can we design a safe digital world without knowing how and where children and young people are at risk? The change that we want needs to be informed by comprehensive and quality data and evidence, including the perceptions and voices of children and young people from across the world. We do not only need better and reliable data, but also collaboration, capacity and sustained political support to ensure data is used effectively. This is why we named the initiative ‘data for change’!

The hidden nature of online child sexual exploitation and abuse

How can we make a difference for this and future generation of children without adequate resources?

Natalie: Echoing that, there is currently not only a fragmented data landscape but also fragmented investment in capacity and infrastructure. When we are speaking about data, we are referring to the whole ecosystem. So not just datasets, but also data resources, technical expertise, ethical principles, legal agreements, relationships, technology infrastructure, etc. We need this full picture of data to inform more dynamic systems and anticipatory frameworks so that we are not always reactive. 

Rates of change are increasing for not only how quickly technology is evolving but also how rapidly it is affecting the nature of our daily lives. This is adding complexity to an already massive challenge in keeping children safe online. There is a huge opportunity and need to use data to frame this conversation more proactively and create the groundwork for a shared way forward so that this does not become an ongoing exercise in firefighting but rather in strategically shaping our digital futures. 

Q: What was your experience with data coming into this initiative?

Natalie: This is an interesting question especially considering how everyone in the workshop had diverse expertise and experiences and came in thinking about data from different perspectives. It’s good to reflect on this while thinking about our own experience with data.

I have a background in data science, and I’ve worked a lot with data for social good including thinking about data governance, data privacy and data ethics. I see a lot of potential to find ways to put narratives and learnings from those topics within the context of and in service of child safety.

When we did the first data initiative in 2021 and again this year, I realised there is so much that exists in terms of data governance and data ethics work, and we have an opportunity to learn from other communities doing this work. But I also realised diving into this, that there’s so much that’s so unique about our field – for instance, how technology is intertwined, the sensitivity of much of the data, how the issues evolve so quickly. So, while we can learn from other communities and build on certain things there’s so much that is unique in our space and needs to be done very thoughtfully with people who understand this problem. If we are able to figure some of these things out in collaborative and dynamic ways, that can offer other folks a lot of potential to learn from our space too.

Serena: Every sector or professional, based on their experience and expertise, will see, think and talk about data in a different way and that remains one of the key barriers when we’re trying to align different data sets to create a more comprehensive and harmonised picture. For instance, law enforcement will have their own expectations from data as something that is going to lead them to identify the victim and bring the perpetrator to justice. Academics will focus more on sampling, methodology and quality. Professionals will want easy to use data for programming, policy and advocacy. This variety is a richness, but it’s also a challenge; because it’s about building bridges for people to talk to each other, understand different datasets, terminologies and working modalities and see how to better align efforts across sectors and levels.

Q: What was the biggest challenge and success in organising this workshop?

Natalie: The biggest challenge going into the workshop was striking the right balance in capacities to approach the data landscape effort that came out as a priority from the 2021 convening and was used to inform the conversations for this year’s workshop. The key question was do we bring in data experts and then try to complement the content expertise or do we bring in someone from our ecosystem and try to bolster or find some way to connect them to data expertise so that they’re not starting from scratch.

Our team is a great example of a mix of expertise and perspectives coming together and being able to look at the data ecosystem in collaborative ways with the goal of identifying concrete places to advance this work. We hope to take what we are learning in our team’s experience with these efforts so far to better build bridges and spaces for the wider ecosystem to do the same.

Serena: The biggest success was bringing the right people into the room and creating a safe space for them to share and learn from each other. We are grateful to all the participants who not only joined us but who were willing to be open and very engaged to build a better data ecosystem for child online safety.  

Natalie: I agree, a success for me was the openness with which people approached the workshop and the fact that we heard from people that they came away with new ideas and connections. This group of people have invaluable expertise based on their work and perspectives and coming into the workshop some challenges to current ways of working were presented for people to sit with – of trying to make some shifts in looking at data not in terms of our individual organisational mandates and in silos but instead in more comprehensive and harmonised ways.  By the end of the two days, we heard from many participants that they had changed their minds in some way in how they think about data. Some said, “Maybe I didn’t know everything that I thought I did” or “It’s important for me to see this differently.” This feedback and engagement of the community we brought together was hugely positive for me.

Q: What does the future with this initiative look like?

Natalie: In the longer term, one important focus is creating mechanisms for data governance and seeing that take shape – it is incredibly important in any data ecosystem, and it doesn’t exist for this field as a whole yet. We also want to see shifts in narratives and more inclusion as well. In fact, being intentional about inclusion of different actors that aren’t well represented is an immediate next step and then also over time, having a more inclusive ecosystem as a whole.

Serena: With data, we will be able to quantify, understand and contextualize risks and the extent to which children and young people experience the abuse in order to prevent and disrupt it before it happens. This is what ‘Data for change’ means! Without data this crime will remain invisible, and we would be investing in the dark. Data has the power to make this horrible crime against children visible and to guide us in designing safe digital futures for children and young people. 

Since 2017, Safe Online has invested over USD 76 million across 100 projects in 85 countries. Of this, over USD 20 million has been invested in evidence and data generation.

Images: © Safe Online/Photographer: Rafael Duarte

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Bridging Perspectives at TrustCon 2024: Our Workshop Experience

August 12, 2024

TrustCon 2024, one of the leading events in the Trust & Safety community attended by over 1300 participants, provided an amazing platform for engagement and collaboration among professionals from various sectors. Our workshop was a blend of fireside chat, lightning talks, and breakout sessions for Q&A with researchers, ending with an energetic brainstorming session.

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Woman writing in notebook

Policy Proposal 3

May 13, 2023

As part of Together to #ENDviolence, experts from across the End Violence community came together to prepare a prioritized set of policy proposals to end violence against children. The result is six game-changing policy proposals, backed by evidence and research on what works to protect children.

Read More »
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11 new countries join flagship global initiative to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse

11 new countries join flagship global initiative to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse

Disrupting Harm is a large-scale research project that provides robust evidence across sectors, on children’s exposure to online sexual exploitation and abuse, and how countries can more effectively respond to this crime. Today, ECPAT International, INTERPOL, Safe Online and UNICEF Innocenti are announcing the implementation of Disrupting Harm in eleven new countries: Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Serbia and Tunisia.

This second round of investment (totalling USD $7.5m) will enable robust research on online child sexual exploitation and abuse, conducted by Disrupting Harm partners with support from national expert organizations. By 2025, evidence-informed action plans will be produced for each country to strengthen their capacity to prevent and respond to online child sexual exploitation abuse. 

In today’s increasingly digital world, the internet has become an integral part of children and young people’s lives, providing enormous opportunities for communication, education and entertainment. At the same time, it can also present a serious threat to their safety and well-being. Unfortunately, there is very little solid evidence available on the scale of these risks, which groups of children are more likely to be harmed, and where or how this happens.

In 2019, in response to the growing threat of online child sexual exploitation and abuse, Safe Online invested an initial USD $7m in the Disrupting Harm large-scale research project, implemented by ECPAT International, INTERPOL and UNICEF. Disrupting Harm produces crucial evidence on children’s exposure to online sexual exploitation and abuse, and assesses how national protection systems are responding to this crime. Based on this research it proposes ways in which leaders and policy-makers can help strengthen online child sexual exploitation and abuse prevention and response approaches to more effectively address this issue.

Taking a holistic and cross-sectoral approach, Disrupting Harm conducts nationally representative household surveys with children and their caregivers; reviews existing national laws and policies; engages with national law enforcement agencies to understand their capacity to effectively respond to these crimes; documents the experiences of children and young people who have experienced online sexual exploitation and abuse; and studies the experiences of frontline welfare workers and justice professionals who are working with cases of online child sexual exploitation and abuse to understand their capacities and needs.

Disrupting Harm has so far been implemented in thirteen countries across South-East Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa.

Headline findings from these countries show that:

In response, a number of these countries have already initiated policy and legislative changes to strengthen prevention and response, for example:

    • In line with Disrupting Harm recommendations, the Government of Malaysia amended existing legislation to ban sexual extortion and livestreaming of child sexual abuse, making these criminal offences. This move better enables the effective prosecution of these crimes. These amendments represent a significant strengthening of the country’s legislative framework in this area and contribute to creating a safer online world for children in Malaysia.
    • In Indonesia, Disrupting Harm recommendations were used to help develop a National Roadmap on Child Online Protection and informed the revision of national standards and training modules for integrated child protection services. Findings from the program were also applied to the development of a web-based platform strengthening children’s awareness of violence, including online safety.
    • In Tanzania, insights and recommendations were integrated into education and training materials developed by the Ministry of Health.

Today, ECPAT International, INTERPOL, Safe Online and UNICEF Innocenti are announcing the implementation of the second phase of the Disrupting Harm program in eleven new countries. These are: Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Jordan, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Serbia and Tunisia. The research will be implemented between 2023-2025 through close collaboration between a range of different actors including national UNICEF offices, civil society organisations, ECPAT network members, law enforcement and INTERPOL National Central Bureaus, independent expert organizations, and government institutions.

Findings from the first phase of Disrupting Harm can be found here: https://safeonline.global/disrupting-harm/#findings As the findings from the second phase emerge, they will be accessible here.

Image: © UNICEF:UN051254

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Children Online Protection Lab – Request for EoI

February 7, 2024

The objective of this Request for Expressions of Interest (EOI) is to develop a better understanding of the Children Online Protection Laboratory (COPL) community’s priorities, identify ideas and resources and co-construct next steps of the experimentation process.

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