WeProtect

Last updated
WeProtect Global Alliance
Formation2013
Type Non-profit organization
Focusprotecting children online
Region served
Worldwide
Website www.weprotect.org OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

WeProtect Global Alliance (also known as the Alliance) is a global alliance that brings together experts from government, the private sector and civil society to protect children from sexual abuse online.

Contents

History

On 22 July 2013, then-Prime Minister David Cameron made a speech regarding the proliferation and accessibility of child abuse images on the Internet and about cracking down on online pornography. [1] The Prime Minister announced the launch of WeProtect in December 2014. [2]

In May 2016, WePROTECT merged with the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online, forming "WeProtect Global Alliance". [3] In July 2016, the WeProtect Global Alliance launched a new Fund to End Violence Against Children at the United Nations to deliver a global program of capacity and capability, with an initial donation of £40 million from the UK government. The Fund is hosted by UNICEF, and the WePROTECT Global Alliance Board are responsible for advising how to prioritize its activities for maximum impact. [4]

By 2023, Iain Drennan was the organization's executive director. [5]

Related Research Articles

Child sex tourism (CST) is tourism for the purpose of engaging in the prostitution of children, which is commercially facilitated child sexual abuse. The definition of child in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is "every human being below the age of 18 years". Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, which may include sexually transmitted infections, "drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death", according to the State Department of the United States. Child sex tourism, part of the multibillion-dollar global sex tourism industry, is a form of child prostitution within the wider issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Child sex tourism victimizes approximately 2 million children around the world. The children who perform as prostitutes in the child sex tourism trade often have been lured or abducted into sexual slavery.

Rape pornography is a subgenre of pornography involving the description or depiction of rape. Such pornography either involves simulated rape, wherein sexually consenting adults feign rape, or it involves actual rape. Victims of actual rape may be coerced to feign consent such that the pornography produced deceptively appears as simulated rape or non-rape pornography. The depiction of rape in non-pornographic media is not considered rape pornography. Simulated scenes of rape and other forms of sexual violence have appeared in mainstream cinema, including rape and revenge films, almost since its advent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecilia Malmström</span> Swedish politician

Anna Cecilia Malmström is a Swedish politician who served as European Commissioner for Trade from 2014 to 2019. She previously served as European Commissioner for Home Affairs from 2010 to 2014 and Minister for European Union Affairs from 2006 to 2010. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Sweden from 1999 to 2006.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a private, nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the United States Congress. In September 2013, the United States House of Representatives, United States Senate, and the President of the United States reauthorized the allocation of $40 million in funding for the organization as part of Missing Children's Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2013. The current chair of the organization is Jon Grosso of Kohl's. NCMEC handles cases of missing minors from infancy to young adults through age 20.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual grooming</span> Child sexual abuse compliance method

Sexual grooming refers to actions or behaviors used to establish an emotional connection with a minor, and sometimes the child's family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. It can occur in various settings, including online, in person, and through other means of communication. Children who are groomed may experience mental health issues, including "anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal thoughts."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Commercial sexual exploitation of children</span> Commercial transaction that involves the sexual exploitation of a child

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC) defines the “umbrella” of crimes and activities that involve inflicting sexual abuse on to a child as a financial or personal opportunity. Commercial Sexual Exploitation consists of forcing a child into prostitution, sex trafficking, early marriage, child sex tourism and any other venture of exploiting children into sexual activities. According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the lack of reporting the crime and “the difficulties associated with identifying and measuring victims and perpetrators” has made it almost impossible to create a national estimate of the prevalence of Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the United States. There is an estimated one million children that are exploited for commercial sex globally; of the one million children that are exploited, the majority are girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command</span> Command of the National Crime Agency

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command, or CEOP Command, is a command of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), and is tasked to work both nationally and internationally to bring online child sex offenders, including those involved in the production, distribution and viewing of child abuse material, to the UK courts. The centre was formed in April 2006 as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and was absorbed into the NCA on 7 October 2013 by the Crime and Courts Act 2013.

The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC), headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, with a regional presence in the United Kingdom, Europe, Turkey, Africa, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Caribbean, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australasia, is a private 501(c)(3) non-governmental, nonprofit global organization. It combats child sexual exploitation, child pornography, child trafficking and child abduction.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), previously known as Morality in Media and Operation Yorkville, is an American conservative anti-pornography organization. The group has also campaigned against sex trafficking, same-sex marriage, sex shops and sex toys, decriminalization of sex work, comprehensive sex education, and various works of literature or visual arts the organization has deemed obscene, profane or indecent. Its current president is Patrick A. Trueman. The organization describes its goal as "exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation".

Internet censorship in the United Kingdom is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, administrative regulations and voluntary arrangements. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include English defamation law, the Copyright law of the United Kingdom, regulations against incitement to terrorism and child pornography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet Watch Foundation</span> Registered charity in Cambridge, England

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is a global registered charity based in Cambridge, England. It states that its remit is "to minimise the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhere in the world and non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK." Content inciting racial hatred was removed from the IWF's remit after a police website was set up for the purpose in April 2011. The IWF used to also take reports of criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK. This was removed from the IWF's remit in 2017. As part of its function, the IWF says that it will "supply partners with an accurate and current URL list to enable blocking of child sexual abuse content". It has "an excellent and responsive national Hotline reporting service" for receiving reports from the public. In addition to receiving referrals from the public, its agents also proactively search the open web and deep web to identify child sexual abuse images and videos. It can then ask service providers to take down the websites containing the images or to block them if they fall outside UK jurisdiction.

Child pornography is illegal in most countries, but there is substantial variation in definitions, categories, penalties, and interpretations of laws. Differences include the definition of "child" under the laws, which can vary with the age of sexual consent; the definition of "child pornography" itself, for example on the basis of medium or degree of reality; and which actions are criminal. Laws surrounding fictional child pornography are a major source of variation between jurisdictions; some maintain distinctions in legality between real and fictive pornography depicting minors, while others regulate fictive material under general laws against child pornography.

Child pornography is erotic material that depicts persons under the age of 18. The precise characteristics of what constitutes child pornography varies by criminal jurisdiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Perry O'Neill</span> British politician

Claire Louise Perry O'Neill is a British businesswoman and former politician who is the managing director for climate and energy at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, having previously served as Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth from 2017 to 2019. Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes in Wiltshire from 2010 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Champion</span> British Labour politician

Sarah Deborah Champion is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rotherham since 2012.

The precise number of websites blocked in the United Kingdom is unknown. Blocking techniques vary from one Internet service provider (ISP) to another with some sites or specific URLs blocked by some ISPs and not others. Websites and services are blocked using a combination of data feeds from private content-control technology companies, government agencies, NGOs, court orders in conjunction with the service administrators who may or may not have the power to unblock, additionally block, appeal or recategorise blocked content.

A dossier on paedophiles allegedly associated with the British government was assembled by the British Member of Parliament Geoffrey Dickens, who handed it to the then-Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, in 1984. The whereabouts of the dossier is unknown, along with other files on organised child abuse that had been held by the Home Office.

Patrick Robert John Rock de Besombes, is a former British political aide, special adviser and convicted sex offender. He was deputy director of policy to David Cameron, Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, until he was forced to resign in 2014 over allegations of making and possessing indecent images of children, for which he was later convicted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pornography in Albania</span>

Pornography in Albania is not restricted. It is only illegal for producing, delivering, advertising, importing, selling and publishing pornographic material under the age of 18. Child pornography is prohibited, but Albania has failed to adopt laws against the publishing, manufacturing, accessing, dissemination and the expansion of child pornography. Internet pornography is legal.

Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.

References

  1. "The internet and pornography: Prime Minister calls for action". www.gov.uk. 22 July 2013.
  2. Ball, James (11 December 2014). "GCHQ: David Cameron's 'dark web' announcement says nothing new". The Guardian . Retrieved 15 March 2024.
  3. Shields, Joanna (30 May 2016). "'A crime scene of unspeakable horror': child sex abuse and the internet". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  4. "Fund". www.end-violence.org. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  5. Landi, Martyn (17 October 2023). "Child sexual abuse material online 'has doubled since 2019". The Independent . Retrieved 15 March 2024.