Global Threat Assessment Report 2021

Context-

Recently, We Protect Global Alliance released the global threat Assessment report 2021 which indicated that COVID-19 had contributed to a significant rise is child sexual exploitation and abuse online.

Key findings

• In past two years, the reporting of child sexual abuse and online exploitation has reached its highest level.
• There has been rise in child ‘self generated’ sexual material which poses a new challenge to the existing response. There was an increase of 77% in child ‘self generated’ sexual material from 2019 to 2020.
• As part of the report, a global study of childhood experiences of more than 5000 young adults aged 18 to 20 years across 54 countries was done. This study revealed that about 54% of the respondents had experienced at least one online sexual harm incident during childhood. About 34% of them had been asked to do something explicit online.
• Respondents identified as LGBTQ+/Transgender/non binary/ or disabled were more likely experienced online sexual harms during childhood.
• The report also said that only 37% of technology companies are using tools to detect online child sexual abuse material and online grooming.
• There was an 106% increase in reports of suspected child sexual exploitation, as per National centre for Missing and exploited children.
• The report calls of various measures to prevent child sexual abuse and online exploitation by creating safe online environments, tools for detecting any explicit content and multi-stakeholder participation to address this major problem.
• We Protect Global Alliance – It is a global movement of more than 200 governments, private sector companies and civil society organizations working towards the issue of child sexual abuse and online exploitation.