The briefing on 'ITU Child Online Protection Guidelines - Roll out in Europe: Regional and national updates' was held virtually on 25 May from 10:00 to 11:00 CEST. This briefing was organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Office for Europe, under the framework of the ITU Regional Initiative for Europe EUR4 on 'Enhancing trust and confidence in the use of information and communication technologies', adopted by WTDC-17 Buenos Aires.
Now more than ever, the digital world provides tremendous opportunities to better the education, support inclusion, and widen learning and social opportunities of children and the Youth. Yet, to capitalize on such opportunities, it is central to protect children from online harms such as cyberbullying, fake news and Internet exploitation. The ITU Child Online Protection Guidelines aimed to address these issues by providing a set of resources and tools targeting all key players to support the creation of a safe online for young persons. In particular, the Guidelines help children to learn how to manage risks online, and parents and educators to become aware and understand the potential risks and threats of cyberspace, while developing digital skills and digital literacy. It supports industry players in the development of internal COP policies, and serves as a guide and as a solid foundation for policy-makers on which to develop inclusive, multi-stakeholder national strategies.
Within this context, countries in the Europe Region have put great efforts in strengthening their capacity to address the challenges around child online protection, through translating and rolling-out the Guidelines at the national level. The Guidelines are currently available in fourteen (14) languages of the Europe Region (i.e., Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, English, French, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian). Activities such as launching events, trainings, workshops, webinars and communication campaigns also took place to facilitate the roll out of the Guidelines in the countries. In parallel, to address the need to adapt to a continuously changing digital world, ITU responds by supporting the countries in their COP journey and by constantly updating and releasing new COP related materials.
This briefing provided updates on recently released and upcoming COP materials made available by ITU, including an online self-paced training targeting parents and educators, in order to continue supporting stakeholders' efforts in the field. This briefing also presented the new COP-related developments taking place at the national level in the Region and provided a platform to exchange between stakeholders on challenges and good practices that can be scaled up in other countries of the Europe Region.
