New York, 26 June 2024: In a significant stride toward safeguarding children in the digital age, Safe Online is making a $10 million investment across 23 projects aimed at combatting online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) and related digital harms.
Online digital harm is increasing at an alarming rate exposing children to unprecedented risks. As per the latest Childlight data, one case of online child abuse is reported every second. The Internet Watch Foundation noted 2023 as a ‘record year’ for child sexual abuse with an 8 per cent increase in the number of child sexual abuse imagery found online from the previous year. New and emerging technologies like Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Extended Reality (ER) are turbocharging the rate of abuse, generating child sexual abuse material at a scale and speed never seen before.
To combat the growing threats in the digital space, Safe Online launched a global call for proposals in 2023. After a rigorous selection process, 23 grantees have been selected to receive USD 10 million. These 23 new projects, from across the world, are poised to achieve maximum impact by supporting work across multiple sectors to protect children from online harms. The projects aim to strengthen systems, key infrastructure and services and create incentives for action through changing norms, policies and regulations. Projects will create and promote a global evidence base to support the ecosystem and develop innovative tools to reduce barriers to access to cutting-edge technologies in the online safety space and promote tools that are shareable, adaptable and create efficiencies in online CSEA prevention and response efforts at all levels.
Grantees include international organisations, child protection NGOs and CSOs, research and tech organisations and include a range of innovative projects – from looking at vulnerability of children in crisis situations to online sexual abuse and developing educational resources for protection; exploring the link between online scamming call centers and the financial sexual extortion of minors; developing advanced tech tools for helplines to better understand and combat online (CSEA), and making counselors more effective in protecting children to developing tools for law enforcement to respond and prevent online abuse. Read more on the new projects here
The new investment grows Safe Online’s investment portfolio to USD 100 million across 106 projects with impact in 100 countries and accelerates Safe Online’s globally important role as a catalyst for new solutions to combat digital harms.
With the launch of the new awardees, Safe Online has announced another global Open Call for $ 5 million. To invest most effectively in the most burning issues in the online CSEA ecosystem, the 2024 Open Call is focused on innovation and high impact.
Our grantees Thorn Global CSAM Classifier Development Program Countries involved:United States of America Supported by Safe Online’s investments, Thorn has accelerated the development of their artificial intelligence classifiers, which are working to automate the detection of CSAM. Through this project, Thorn aimed to create a global standard for labelling, connecting
Kenya’s National Council on the Administration of Justice (NCAJ) has launched a training handbook on the investigation and prosecution of online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) in Kenya.
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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