1. Key Policy Questions and related issues:
How to balance risks and opportunities online for children taking into consideration different sociocultural contexts?
How can children’s rights to participation, access to information, and freedom of speech be preserved and balanced with their right to be protected from violence, hate speech, exploitation and sexual abuse in the online environment?
How different stakeholders, including children themselves, perceive the balance between risks and opportunities?
2. Summary of Issues Discussed:
Although roughly 1/3 of all Internet users are under 18 (according to UNICEF), most regulatory instruments for promoting human rights and data protection do not present specific recommendations aimed at this group. There is no consensus on how to balance protection from on line abuse without restricting opportunities made available by digital inclusion such as access to information and freedom of expression.
Children's rights do apply online as offline, even though the digital environment is profoundly reconfiguring the expression of rights, the array of rights and rights infringements thar children experience.There is a challenge on how to operationalize online children´s rights, as stated by the Convention of the Rights of the child, which was crafted before the Internet.
There is broad consesus on the need for including sound evidence from research to support the implementation of those policies and to protect children's rights globally and at the national level, with a focus on including children´s own voices.
7. Reflection to Gender Issues:
Gender issues were discussed as part of the differentiated challenges facing boys and girls in their digital lives, and the need to address them in the programs and policies aimed at setting their rights.
10. Voluntary Commitment:
The speakers did not express their voluntary commitments during the event; they were offered the link to do so.