#StopChildAbuse, an INCIBE campaign to raise awareness about the sexual abuse and exploitation of minors on the Internet
This awareness-raising campaign is launched within the framework of the EU project 4NSEEK and is aimed at the general public, minors, families and educators.
The Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) has launched a new awareness-raising campaign, #StopChildAbuse, to stop and prevent the abuse and sexual exploitation of minors on the Internet. This campaign was developed alongside a group of experts within the framework of the EU project 4NSEEK (Forensic Against Sexual Exploitation of Children), the consortium of which INCIBE is the coordinator and it deals with realising one of the aims of the project.
The campaign includes various materials for spreading the message, such as blog entries, graphics and videos, as well as a guide aimed mainly at people working with children, and an educational activity for the classroom. They are broken down into four blocks according to the audience: an overview, minors, families and educators, and they are available in Spanish and English, as a commitment within the EU project, though it may later be translated into other languages.
Content for each of the campaign’s target audiences
The first block sets out the problem of coercion and sexual extorsion of minors and is complemented with a monograph that sets out an analysis to understand and deal with this problem from a broad, albeit accessible, perspective.
The minors’ block focuses on raising awareness among young people, in order to foster their mutual support when facing this type of situation, to detect the problem in their social and family circle in time and to ask for help when a situation on the Internet makes them feel bad.
On the other hand, families have various resources to help them to identify signs that suggest that there is a problem online, as well as to guide them in how to handle with their children a situation of possible abuse through the Internet.
The last block takes us to classrooms and how to use them to combat abuse, covering the digital education of minors as regards emotions, sexuality and healthy relationships. Thus, they are offered an educational activity so that young people learn to detect high-risk requests on the Internet, and to get involved by supporting their classmates when they are facing these situations.
The monograph 'Online child sexual abuse and exploitation: an analysis of 4NSEEK'
This monograph analyses the problem of abuse and sexual exploitation of minors in the context of the Internet, in order to help the various professionals who work with children and teenagers to understand how abusive and sexually exploitative situations arise on the Internet, given that they may affect any minor. Also, to improve their ability to prevent, detect and respond to the multiplicity of abusive situations that exist, and to contribute to spreading this knowledge to the society.
In preparing the monograph and the rest of the campaign materials #StopChildAbuse, the members of the project’s working group have participated alongside INCIBE: the Portuguese Association for Victim Support (APAV); Guardia Civil through EMUME Central - Technical Unit of the Judicial Police; the National Police Corps; Malta Police; EUROPOL – European Cybercrime Centre (EC3); UNICEF Spain; the Federation of Associations for the Prevention of Child Abuse (FAPMI) ECPAT Spain and EU KIDS ONLINE, a leading research group for the study of minors and new media at the University of the Basque Country.
All the campaign’s resources on sexual abuse and exploitation of minors are available at:
About the EU project 4NSEEK
The Project 4NSEEK (Forensic Against Sexual Exploitation of Children), which ends in June 2021, is co-funded by the European Union (EU) through the funding programme Internal Security Fund - Police, call ISFP-2017-AG-CYBER.
Its objectives are to promote international police cooperation by using shared forensic tools and procedures, as well as advanced training in this area (Cybersecurity BootCamp); to improve the 4NSEEK forensic analysis tool specialising in child abuse and to have a group of experts develop and distribute guides and other materials for detecting and preventing the sexual abuse of minors.
