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Dear Friends and Partners,
In 2024, Safe Online crossed a major milestone: nearly USD 100 million invested in child online safety across more than 100 countries. This is more than a number—it represents a collective commitment to building a safer digital world for children, one where protection, dignity and rights are non-negotiable.
We celebrate the scale of what we’ve achieved together. Our investments are helping frontline responders rescue victims and remove harmful content. They’re fuelling research and innovation—from artificial intelligence (AI) based detection tools to school-based counselling. And they’re giving children and families the knowledge, tools and confidence to navigate digital life safely.
Our knowledge, evidence and collective action are incentivising policy changes across countries and sectors setting foundations for a more effective and future-proof framework for tackling digital harms.
But the challenges are escalating. Every second, a new case of child sexual abuse online is reported. Deepfake abuse and AI-generated child sexual abuse material are rising at alarming rates. AI chatbots are now capable of grooming children at scale. In the digital world, abuse is multiplying, mutating, and spreading faster than ever before.
Technology has become both a tool and a vector for harm. In this reality, reactive solutions are not enough. We must think upstream, move faster, and invest in bold, forward-looking action.
That’s why in 2025 and beyond, Safe Online will scale up efforts in four key areas:
Thanks to the commitment of our donors, grantees, and partners, Safe Online has grown into the leading global fund dedicated solely to online child safety. You’ve helped drive systemic change—and we’re just getting started.
In the face of accelerating risks, there is also unprecedented momentum. Together, we can reimagine the digital future—one where every child is safe, supported, and free from online harms.
With gratitude and resolve,
Marija Manojlovic
Executive Director, Safe Online
In 2024, Safe Online deepened efforts across its four strategic objectives – (i) investing for impact, (ii) generating evidence and knowledge, (iii) advocacy and action, and (iv) measuring change – while remaining agile and responsive to fast-evolving online threats.
These efforts build on a strong foundation: To date, Safe Online has invested nearly USD 100 million with an impact in more than 100 countries.
Given the global funding gap to address the threats to online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA), Safe Online invests in strategic, high-impact interventions. It adopts a holistic, upstream approach to programming that prioritises prevention, infrastructure-building, and cross-sector collaboration. Scalable initiatives, open-source technology solutions and strengthening data systems that benefit the entire ecosystem are prioritised.
In 2024, Safe Online awarded and announced new investments amounting to nearly USD 16 million, aiming to support more than 50 innovative projects.
Safe Online awarded USD 10 million across 23 new projects to advance the online safety agenda by building a robust global evidence base, driving innovation, and breaking barriers to new technologies. Projects awarded under this ‘whole system’ approach will support work across multiple sectors to achieve maximum impact for three Safe Online investment pillars: Networks and Systems, Research and Data, and Technology Tools.
In addition to the USD 10 million investment, in 2024, Safe Online launched a new global Open Call to fund innovative, high impact projects that will empower local experts to prevent digital harms to children through capacity-building in technology, youth outreach, and child participation.
Marking a significant step forward in Safe Online’s efforts to generate evidence on what works and what doesn’t to tackle online CSEA, it awarded USD 500,000 in continued support to evaluations. This forms part of Safe Online’s broader commitment to evidence generation and use grantee-reported results to understand the impact of the programmes and tools it funds, while also capturing lessons from the ground on how change happens.
Given the alarming rise in AI-generated CSAM, in 2024, Safe Online awarded USD 220,000 to projects to increase the sparse research landscape on intersections of Gen AI and online CSEA marking a critical development in understanding risks associated with AI-generated content.
In 2024, Safe Online succeeded in securing funding for the Children Online Protection Laboratory (COPL), with the support of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the French Republic, and is poised to explore, promote, and implement solutions that support children and youth in the digital space. France is the third G7 country that commits financial resources to be managed by Safe Online, along with the United Kingdom and Japan.
In 2024, Safe Online expanded the global evidence base on online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), covering gaps in laws, policies, and awareness in 25 countries.
It supported research into offender behaviors, grooming patterns, and the effectiveness of tech industry safeguards like age verification.
Safe Online also promoted knowledge sharing and cross-regional learning to drive broader applicability and uptake by policymakers and the tech industry.
Safe Online continued to strengthen national-level evidence generation through its flagship Disrupting Harm (DH) project which delivers deep, country-level insights on online CSEA. Phase 1 delivered powerful insights from 13 countries across Southern and Eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. Safe Online expanded the initiative in 2022 with an additional USD$7 million investment – bringing total funding to USD$15 million and extending research to 12 more countries across 4 new regions. Findings from these 12 countries will be available soon.
Safe Online Safe prioritises research that drives practical solutions and informs real-world interventions. A notable example of research translating into action in 2024 was the co-development of a Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) warning message by the University of Kent — a Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund grantee — in collaboration with Google. Informed directly by psychological insights from the research project, the warning message is now displayed to users searching for CSAM on Google, exemplifying how targeted research can drive impactful, real-world interventions.
Safe Online supported the regional workshop, Collective Action: End Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, organised by ECPAT International together with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimse (UNODC) and Down to Zero. The workshop helped to translate the evidence generated by Disrupting Harm I into change across sectors and levels. On the margins of the regional workshop, Safe Online hosted the Regional Network Forum in Southeast Asia and the Pacific and contributed to the regional workshop for West and Central Africa to identify specific regional needs, foster cross-country learning, and build partnerships.
Safe Online co-facilitated a convening with the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund, bringing together 13 grantees from the Research Fund as well as more than a dozen leading tech companies to share findings on grooming, tech solutions for data gaps and solutions grounded in local trends, along with youth perspectives.
Held alongside the Tech Coalition Hackathon, with support from Google, the event connected researchers, engineers, and product teams to turn evidence into action.
Safe Online together with the Tech Coalition hosted a workshop at TrustCon 2024. The session engaged nearly 50 participants including Trust and Safety professionals, tech industry leaders, CSOs, NGOs, and academic researchers to explore effective ways for researchers and industry professionals to collaborate to combat digital harms.
Through these events, Safe Online engaged over 20 leading tech companies to explore effective collaboration between researchers and industry on combatting digital harms.
In 2024, Safe Online hosted a Data for Change workshop in London, presenting a mapping of the online CSEA data ecosystem followed by a community-wide virtual convening. The initiative has since grown into a thriving Data for Change community with over 200 community members – representing 120 organisations and institutions.
Advocacy and political mobilisation are at the heart of Safe Online’s work. In 2024, leveraging locally and nationally generated evidence, Safe Online amplified the voices and concerns of the communities it serves in global forums and policy dialogues.
In November 2024, the first-ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children brought world leaders together to commit to a future where all children are safe in their homes, schools, communities, and online. At the margins, Safe Online, the Brave Movement, WeProtect Global Alliance, and 15+ partners hosted Safe Digital Futures for Children, a high-impact satellite event spotlighting digital safety and well-being of children. A powerful Joint Call to Action from survivors and allies urged for a safer digital world for all children.
The momentum was undeniable: leaders from 10+ countries shared strategies and lessons learned, while 20 nations submitted formal pledges to combat online harms at the Ministerial Conference.
Safe Online is advocating to make online safety a core priority in the education sector. In 2024, Safe Online, with support from Giga, hosted ‘Safe Connections’ a first of its kind event that united connectivity experts and child online safety champions to place the safety and well-being of children at the heart of the connectivity agenda.
Safe Online teamed up with All Tech is Human for a gathering on the sidelines of the UN’s Summit for the Future in New York City, bringing together 100 key players from civil society, government, industry, and academia, all focused on creating a safer online world for young people.
The inclusion of provisions for children’s digital safety in the Global Digital Compact is a landmark moment in the movement for online safety of children and was directly linked to Safe Online and partners’ advocacy efforts – joint submission on the Global Digital Compact with 5 Rights Foundation, ECPAT International, ITU, WeProtect Global Alliance and World Childhood Foundation.
Along with partner organisations, Safe Online drafted and presented a statement urging policymakers for a swift adoption of the temporary derogation of the ePrivacy Directive, which serves as a key legal structure within the EU for protecting the privacy of online communications.
Safe Online continued its advocacy for digital safety on Safer Internet Day 2024 through the Protecting Children and Youth from Digital Harm Symposium organised by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and through social media. Safe Online was featured as a SID supporter on the official Safer Internet Day page joining a range of stakeholders globally to protect and empower children in their digital lives.
Safe Online is committed to strengthening the capacity to measure change by supporting the generation and use of data on online risks to children and leveraging evidence of what works to drive action through investments and global advocacy.
Over the past year, the Safe Online Evaluation Advisory Group (EAG) has provided valuable technical and strategic directions to Safe Online’s evaluation efforts. The EAG supported the development of a more cohesive and rigorous approach to assessing the impact of Safe Online’s investments helping Safe Online better understand and articulate the outcomes and pathways of change emerging from its work, while reinforcing a culture of learning and accountability across its portfolio.
Safe Online undertook a comprehensive MEL capacity needs assessment across its grantee portfolio to better understand existing strengths, challenges and priorities related to measuring change, evidence generation and use. Based on the findings, Safe Online contracted the Institute of Development Studies to design and deliver MEL capacity-building webinars for grantees.
Safe Online grantees worldwide contributed to progress in tackling online harms against children, advancing the Safe Online Strategy 2023–2025 and Results Framework.
Multiple grantees contributed to comprehensive child-centered policies, practices and partnerships to prevent and tackle online CSEA and support survivors. In Indonesia, a National Roadmap on Child Online Protection (2025–2029) was formulated, while the Philippines finalised its Multi-Year Strategic Action Plan on OSAEC and CSAEM (2024–2028). Ghana’s Cyber Security Authority developed a National Child Online Protection Framework. Safe Online grantees also supported a robust evidence base to prevent and tackle online CSEA and support survivors’
Safe Online grantees have continued developing practices, standards, and tools to prevent and respond to online CSEA, for the benefit of industry and law enforcement players. In 2024, INTERPOL’s DevOps group distributed five new CSAM detection tools to law enforcement officers across 41 countries. RigrAI’s AI-powered Video Summarisation Tool (VST), used to address live-streamed CSEA, was deployed in 16 European child exploitation units. Finally, Thorn’s CSAM classifier was formalised as “Thorn Detect” in 2024 and enabled two major law enforcement agencies using the Enterprise plug-in to improve CSEA case identification and contribute more effectively to the INTERPOL International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) ICSE database.
Safe Online grantees also worked in 2024 towards inclusive child-centered systems, services, capacities and technology tools to prevent and tackle online CSEA and support survivors. The Royal Government of Cambodia integrated child-centered online CSEA training into the National Police Academy curriculum in 2024. Other countries also benefited from new and improved systems, processes and tools to effectively prevent and tackle online CSEA and support survivors.
Finally, children, caregivers, communities, survivors and their families have been informed and empowered to prevent and tackle online CSEA thanks to Safe Online investments in 2024. For example, in Cambodia, awareness of more than half a million children, adolescents and adults was raised through a campaign to promote understanding of different forms of online CSEA, and how to report the cases. Partnership with Meta in Indonesia and South Africa for campaigns on online child safety reached 55.4 million and 11.4 million users in their respective countries.
Safe Online acknowledges the generous contributions of governments, foundations and coalitions whose support over the past several years has helped to create a safer digital world for children and young people.
Safe Online owes special thanks to the following:
Finally, we extend our sincere gratitude to UNICEF for hosting Safe Online
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All imagery is taken from the Safe Online and UNICEF image library
We are here to ensure every child and young person grows in to the digital world feeling safe, and is protected from harm.
We support, champion, and invest in innovative partners from the public, private, and third sectors working towards the same objective.
We believe in equipping guardians and young people with the skills to understand and see danger themselves once accessing digital experiences without supervision.
In 2024, Safe Online invested nearly USD16M in over 50 innovative projects, tackled digital harms, and expanded research into Gen AI and child safety.