Category: Our blog

A recent white paper by the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety highlights the critical need for assessing digital safety. It provides a roadmap to navigate the complexities of measuring digital safety in the context of ongoing technological advancements and evolving regulatory frameworks. 

Accurate measurement of online safety is crucial for creating a safer and more reliable digital environment. It supports informed decision-making, guides policy development, and raises awareness of digital safety issues among all stakeholders. 

However, measuring digital safety is not an easy task – fundamentally, digital safety involves preventing and minimising harm in the online environment. This includes moderating illegal or harmful content, promoting responsible platform design and governance, and empowering users to customise their digital experiences. This is especially complicated in a fast-evolving environment with rapid technological advances and regulatory interventions.  

Given the complexity, the white paper proposes a set of metrics grouped into three basic categorisations to most meaningfully measure digital safety.  

Representatives of 21 Safe Online grants across Southeast Asia and the Pacific had the opportunity to meet face-to-face in Bangkok, Thailand this week in an important moment of reflection and learning. Participants represented ongoing projects in eight countries (Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, The Philippines and Viet Nam) and organisations including 11 NGOs, UNICEF Country Offices, academic institutions and a private company.

The forum was an open space for Safe Online grantees to cross-pollinate between their project and to:

• Share knowledge, new trends, best practices and approaches to end online CSEA.
• Identify pressing and challenging issues along with strategic needs and opportunities.
• Network to build working relationships between grantees and foster future collaboration.

There is growing momentum and positive development of progressive child protection frameworks in Asia. In November 2019, ASEAN adopted the Declaration on the Protection of Children from All Forms of Online Exploitation and Abuse in ASEAN, followed by the Regional Plan of Action for the Protection of Children from All Forms of Online Exploitation and Abuse in ASEAN. These together with two regional guidelines for Comprehensive National Legislation Against All Forms of Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Provision of Protective and Support Services for All Child Victims and Children in Contact with the Law, launched at the 2nd Annual ASEAN ICT Forum on Child Online Protection in November 2023, have created a movement to strengthen regional coordination to prevent and response to online child sexual exploitation and abuse in ASEAN.  

Safe Online funded Disrupting Harm research project jointly implemented by ECPAT International, INTERPOL, and UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti has been significant in contributing to this momentum by generating unique insights on how online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) is manifesting in 13 countries – including Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam – and providing tailored roadmaps for countries to strengthen their prevention and response systems. The results are ground-breaking and are complemented with conversations with survivors in 12 countries, including Malaysia, Cambodia, and South Korea. 

The regional workshop will build upon the above-mentioned momentum, The two day workshop on March 5 and 6 led by ECPAT International along with partners like Safe Online is aimed at sharing experiences and lessons learned in combatting CSEA and strengthening the capacity of practitioners in identifying the best approaches on how to strategically engage with their governments and to support the global advocacy efforts to address this crime.   

The ECPAT Regional Workshop will be followed by a day long Safe Online Regional Network Forum on March 7. Bringing together 20 grantees and implementing partners directly working in the region with a particular focus in 8 countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, The Philippines and Viet Nam) the Forum will offer a space in which a group of selected grantees can connect and learn from each other and co-create a body of collaborative knowledge and solutions to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse in the context of other forms of violence against children.