Spain has signed, together with Australia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Belgium, a declaration to promote global initiatives aimed at strengthening the online protection of minors.
As reported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, the declaration was signed within the framework of the third edition of the Paris Forum for Peace, held this Friday and Saturday. At this meeting, heads of state and major international organizations work with the private sector and civil society with the aim of developing multilateralism and collective actions.
The signed statement highlights the UK's Online Safety Bill and the European Union's Children's Rights Strategy and Digital Services Act, initiatives that have provided international guidance on how to ensure safe safe digital environment for children.
In this way, the signatory countries have expressed their determination to "effectively strengthen the protection of minors on the Internet, focusing on highly effective privacy that guarantees the online verification and estimation of the age of minors, especially to prevent exposure of minors to pornographic content".
In this sense, the initiatives, both legislative and political measures, undertaken by different European countries and the Member States of the European Union, together with the European Commission, the United Kingdom and the private sector, are recognized in order to take them as a reference to move forward. in the matter.
As highlighted by the Ministry, the consensus regarding the promotion of online protection of minors has been reached "in the face of the increasing exposure of minors to harmful content, in particular pornographic content only for adults, cyberbullying, content that leads to self-harming or violent behavior.
Likewise, the focus has also been placed "on the prevention of content related to areas with greater exposure among minors referring to social and psychological problems, online sexual abuse, excessive data collection in the use of digital services and applications, as well as excessive use of the screen.
And it is estimated that one in three children worldwide has been exposed to pornographic content before the age of 12 and a third of children report having been the target of cyberbullying. In fact, according to the latest available data, online child sexual abuse content almost doubled between 2017 and 2019.
Continuing along the same lines, Spain has joined the Laboratory for the protection of minors on the Internet, created by France in 2022 and whose objective is to explore, promote, develop and evaluate solutions that increase the safety of minors online. Among the priorities for the experiments to be carried out in 2024 is the fight against cyberbullying in schools.
Specifically, the Laboratory focuses on the identification of effective technical, organizational or educational tools that guarantee the protection of fundamental rights. To this end, the Laboratory's participants, which include governments, civil society organizations and private companies, assume a series of commitments, including participation in the Laboratory's activities and direct or indirect support, of the experiments participating in the selection and evaluation processes
Likewise, participants commit to supporting the development of frameworks, good industry practices and design principles aimed at security and privacy.
In order to improve in this aspect, the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union is promoting the Artificial Intelligence regulation to preserve democratic rights and values in the new digital economy. For example, one measure is the establishment of watermarks to prevent identity theft and sexual crimes related to AI.
