European Commission

MEMO

Brussels, 5 December 2012

Declaration on the Launch of the Global Alliance against child sexual abuse online

We, the Ministers of Justice and of Interior of countries worldwide participating in the Global Alliance against child sexual abuse online are:

AWARE that child sexual abuse online includes the distribution, trade, possession, and viewing of child pornography via the Internet, and the resulting, continuing harm to the victims depicted,

CONCERNED that child sexual abuse online, a substantial problem worldwide, is a crime that is ubiquitous and knows no borders; that child pornography images circulate easily across jurisdictions, and efforts to reduce such circulation have failed to produce satisfactory results to date; that child pornography offenders are increasingly operating in international online groups that use sophisticated technologies and security protocols to frustrate the efforts of law enforcement to investigate their crimes; and that different laws and policies across jurisdictions also have created law enforcement vulnerabilities that these international offenders are exploiting,

RECOGNISING that these crimes have a truly worldwide dimension, must be addressed as such, and require a genuinely global effort to combat them, prosecute offenders, protect victims and prevent new crimes; that these efforts require specific commitments from national authorities and need to be complementary and to support existing international initiatives,

ACKNOWLEDGING the Guiding Principles of the Global Alliance against Child Sexual Abuse online attached to the present Declaration,

1. Announce our commitment to pursue the shared policy targets of the Global Alliance:

1. Enhancing efforts to identify victims, whose sexual abuse is depicted in child pornography, and ensuring that they receive the necessary assistance, support and protection;

2. Enhancing efforts to investigate cases of child sexual abuse online and to identify and prosecute offenders;

3. Increasing public awareness of the risks posed by children’s activities online, including the self-production of images, in order to reduce the production of new child pornography; and

4. Reducing the availability of child pornography online and the re-victimization of children.

2. In that spirit, we will aim to reach the following operational goals of the Global Alliance:

1. Increase the number of identified victims in the International Child Sexual Exploitation images database (ICSE database) managed by INTERPOL by at least 10% yearly;

2. Establish the necessary framework for the criminalization of child sexual abuse online and the effective prosecution of offenders, with the objective of enhancing efforts to investigate and prosecute offenders;

3. Improve the joint efforts of law enforcement authorities across Global Alliance countries to investigate and prosecute child sexual abuse online;

4. Develop, improve, or support appropriate public awareness campaigns or other measures which educate parents, children, and others responsible for children regarding the risks that children's online conduct poses and the steps they can take to minimize those risks;

5. Share best practices among Global Alliance countries for effective strategies to inform the public about the risks posed by online, self-exploitative conduct in order to reduce the production of new child pornography;

6. Encourage participation by the private sector in identifying and removing known child pornography material located in the relevant State, including increasing as much as possible the volume of system data examined for child pornography images; and

7. Increase the speed of notice and takedown procedures as much as possible without jeopardizing criminal investigations.

3: In order to achieve these shared policy targets and operational goals, we intend:

1. by 1 April 2013 to announce what specific efforts we already undertake, and to indicate specific actions that we will be undertaking in the near future,

2. by 1 July 2014 and every second year after that, to:

• report on the implementation of the measures announced;

• assess progress made to reach the Goals of the Global Alliance and to pursue the shared policy targets; and

• indicate specific actions that we will be undertaking as a follow-up.

4. by December 2014 and every second year after that, to gather at a conference to assess progress on the basis of the reports and to discuss future development of the Global Alliance.

4. We call upon governments in other countries around the world to join the Global Alliance.

Declaration endorsed by Ministers of Justice and of Interior of the 27 EU Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and 21 countries outside the EU: Albania, Australia, Cambodia, Croatia, Georgia, Ghana, Japan, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Serbia, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United States of America, and Vietnam.