What We're Doing

The make-IT-safe campaign is lobbying the IT industry and its leaders to ensure children and young people are protected online.

Through our online petition, make-IT-safe is providing a voice for individuals and groups around the world who want protection for children and young people on the Internet and interactive technologies.

We are building support for make-IT-safe at international meetings and through our growing global campaign coalition.

The campaign is also lobbying governments to ensure their policies and laws protect children and young people on these technologies.

The campaign is encouraging child protection collaborations between the IT industry, governments and child groups as well as approaches which integrate technological, law enforcement, and care and protection measures.

The make-IT-safe campaign is also building on IT child safety work already undertaken by ECPAT International, CHIS and member groups around the world.

Lobbying the IT industry

The make-IT-safe campaign calls for the IT industry to commit resources and technical expertise on a global scale to combat the dangers to young people from its technologies – just as it does for spam, viruses and other threats to the Internet.

We are lobbying key IT players, companies and industry associations to take the lead in forming a global IT child protection organisation.

This body should set and implement global industry standards and protocols, fund research into new safety technologies, and support a worldwide education campaign in all the major languages.

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Lobbying governments

The make-IT-safe campaign is also lobbying governments to shoulder their responsibility for IT child protection. Many countries lack comprehensive laws to combat Internet child abuse and to ensure IT child protection in general. Sometimes existing laws are not adequately enforced.

We are urging governments to adopt policies to ensure the IT industry does protect children and young people. These policies must also enable international co-operation by law enforcement agencies to combat child abuse and exploitation online. Governments also need to ensure proper care and protection for children exploited or exposed to harmful images and messages online and in interactive technologies.

International Support

Our members are building support for make-IT-safe at international meetings and child rights conventions.

ECPAT International made a presentation on the make-IT-safe campaign at a side event at the 61st session of Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in April 2005. As a result, the make-IT-safe campaign has won the support of the UN’s key child rights monitor - the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. The campaign is also backed by the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s subgroup against the sexual exploitation of children, also based at Geneva.

The make-IT-safe campaign is now working to ensure child protection online gets high priority at the UN's World Summit on the Information Society in late 2005. We are also lobbying the IT industry, which is well represented in the Summit’s deliberations, to highlight IT child protection as well.

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A global coalition

The make-IT-safe campaign brings together 73 ECPAT groups in 67 countries with the UK’s six leading child protection and welfare groups which make up CHIS.

We are building a global coalition on IT child protection – including the IT industry, private sectors, governments, international agencies, NGOs and community groups.

Individuals and organisations can support the make-IT-safe campaign by:

• Signing our online petition and encouraging others to do the same
• Lobbying their local IT companies and governments
• Highlighting make-IT-safe and Internet child safety in the media
• Distributing make-IT-safe campaign materials to Internet cafes, youth groups, schools and local communities

We are asking supporters to report their campaign activities to make-IT-safe so we can monitor and publicise IT industry and government responses.

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Integrated child safety

We are also pushing for an IT child safety approach which integrates technological, law enforcement, and child care and protection measures.

In the UK, CHIS has been involved in setting up a multi-agency Centre for Child Protection on the Internet, announced recently by the British Government. The Centre will support the police and child protection agencies and target paedophiles that use the Internet to distribute illegal images and ‘groom’ children. It will be staffed by specialist police officers as well as child protection and Internet industry experts, and will be a focal point for the online element of child protection work.

ECPAT Taiwan recently won an agreement from 10 of Taiwan’s major Internet service and content providers on protocols to protect children from harmful and illegal content on the Internet. Each company has agreed to set up its own child protection team and to provide a special section on its website for child safety information. The 10 companies have also agreed to use ECPAT Taiwan’s Web547 hotline as the reporting channel for child pornography and abuse of children online. As well, each company has agreed to follow a protocol to give notice and take down sites and content which harm or exploit children.

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