IGF 2021 WS #195
Building an empowering online environment for children

Organizer 1: Anamaria Meshkurti, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Speaker 1: Tomco Vilma, Government, Eastern European Group
Speaker 2: Katalin Baracsi , Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Mesut Kilic, Intergovernmental Organization, Eastern European Group

Moderator

Anamaria Meshkurti, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization

Online Moderator

Jaroslaw Karol PONDER, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization

Rapporteur

Anamaria Meshkurti, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization

Format

Round Table - Circle - 60 Min

Policy Question(s)

Ensuring a safe digital space: How should governments, Internet businesses and other stakeholders protect citizens, including vulnerable citizens, against online exploitation and abuse?

This session focuses on Child Online Protection and how we can ensure a safe space for children online.

SDGs

4. Quality Education
10. Reduced Inequalities


Targets: SDG 4 “Quality of education”: The session will present initiatives to foster digital skills among youth and children in order to safely navigate the online world.
SDG 10 “Reducing inequalities”: This session will discuss pathways to ensure a safe and empowering online environment to all children and young persons.

Description:

Full Title: Building a safe and empowering online environment for children and young people in the Europe Region

Description: In today’s world, Internet is evolving at an unbridled speed, becoming an infinitely richer resource for children to play and learn, but exponentially increasing the risked faced by children online. The current pandemic plays an undeniable role in accelerating this phenomenon while throwing a sharp spotlight on the need to strengthen cybersecurity for the youth. The ITU Child Online Protection (COP) Guidelines, updated launched in June 2020 upon the request of the Member States, provides tools that support children, parents and educators in the development of digital skills and digital literacy, as well as industry and government stakeholders in the development of corporate and national COP policies and strategies. In this context, the roundtable will provide a platform for all stakeholders to exchange their approaches related to keeping children and young persons safe online. It will also offer a unique opportunity to the countries rolling out the COP guidelines to meet and present progress made so far and exchange their national practices. It will give the opportunity to outreach to other stakeholders and inspiring them to undertake concrete actions to create a safe and empowering environment for children and young people at the regional and national level. This way throwing light on perspective of improvement while adapting to country-specific cases and together reflect on the future of cybersecurity and child online protection.

Expected Outcomes

This session will allow the audience to learn more about child online protection, share best practices by governments on the topic and showcase tools that can be used.

The session will be a fully online interactive discussion.
Panellists will be engaged in the discussion based on a pre-agreed set of questions to be asked by the moderator.
Interaction with participants will be made through the online chat box, Q&A functions as well as polls, which will allow to maintain the attention of the public.

Online Participation



Usage of IGF Official Tool. Additional Tools proposed: We might use polls with platforms such as pigeonhole etc.