Ms. Ann Marie Skelton, Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Members of the Committee, Partners, ladies and gentlemen, good morning!
I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here today and I would like to thank the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, firstly, for the invitation, and, much more importantly for making online safety such a priority in your work. Naturally, it is also an important part of our work at ITU.
ITU has always sought to ensure that internet access is affordable for children and young people wherever they are in the world. But, of course, affordability alone is not enough. We must also ensure that when they do connect their online environment is safe.
Let's never forget that these inexperienced, new users are the most vulnerable of all to the dark side of the net. That's why we have been working on the issue of online safety for children for 16 years.
In 2008, ITU launched the Child Online Protection initiative, or COP, with our very first set of child protection guidelines. Our COP programme brings together over 50 partners from around the world, representing all sectors of the global community.
The goal is simple but crucial: to ensure that children and young people all over the world can enjoy the benefits of being online without facing the associated dangers.
ITU takes the issue of Child Online Protection (COP) seriously. I would like to inform you that the ITU Council established a dedicated Working Group on Child Online Protection. The Working Group has generated great interest with high participation and a lot of contributions.
There has been good progress in this area for example, decisions on notice-and-take-down procedures, and filtering schemes for material involving child exploitation. A significant number of our member states are using such measures with some success and others can learn from that experience.
Many member states are also doing good work on raising awareness of the issue within their countries and building capacity for education on child online protection. An example is that of the excellent programmes in schools aimed at strengthening digital literacy.
This work is only going to become more important – indispensable, in fact – as more and more of our daily interactions move online, and children will also have no choice but to go online to access education and learning tools and even healthcare.
Moreover, many aspects of the online world are especially attractive to children such as online gaming platforms and even connected toys, and these are becoming increasingly sophisticated with advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.
So it is fitting that today's meeting has a particular focus on AI. A hot topic in a variety of contexts, but I would argue that one implication of the rise of AI has been neglected, namely its impact on children.
All policies and regulations relating to this technology must actively take children's rights into consideration, informed by relevant supervision like ITU's online child protection guidelines which provides a framework for understanding the potential harm for children in the digital environment.
AI-powered technologies hold enormous potential to improve the lives of children but this can only be achieved if action is taken to address current imbalances in the AI ecosystem, not only rectifying the exclusion of children from the discussion, but also reckoning with gender bias and discrimination. Particularly against girls.
While the dangers of the online world are real, and AI comes with risks as well as opportunities, I want to end on a positive note. The internet and AI have many benefits to offer children and young people, so even as we prioritise safety, let's not forget that 2.6 billion people are still not online at all, and the unconnected population is disproportionately young.
So let us continue our efforts to ensure all children and young people have access to the internet, and do everything in our powers to help them enjoy its miraculous benefits safely.
Thank you!
