NHRC to hold national conference on child sexual abuse material; aims to advocate safe cyberspace for children

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has announced that it will be organising a national conference on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on March 2 and 3. The conference will be chaired by Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, and aims to derive recommendations for policymakers and content hosts, including social media platforms and law enforcement agencies, among others.

The conference will be held at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi and will see the presence of NHRC Chairperson Justice (retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra, senior officers of the ministries concerned, legal experts, academicians, and scholars. The discussions at the conference will revolve around five themes, including understanding the nature, extent, and emerging issues related to CSAM, legal provisions relating to CSAM, the role of technology and intermediaries in the prevention, detection, and investigation of CSAM, international trends in fighting CSAM, and the role of enforcement agencies and cyber forensics in the detection, investigation, and monitoring of CSAM.

The NHRC said in a statement, "The production, transmission, and consumption of CSAM trigger further demand for new and more egregious content, thereby perpetuating the sexual abuse of new children in addition to the continued molestation of child victims. This may have irreparable psychological damage on children, impacting their growth and development."

The Commission has been concerned with the ill-effects of online child sexual abuse material and has been organising dialogues from time to time in the recent past to come out with ways and means to check this menace. In July 2020, the NHRC had organised an online national conference on the subject with valuable inputs from international organisations, government Ministries, law enforcement agencies, and parents’ associations, among others.

The NHRC has also issued two 'Human Rights Advisory for the Protection of the Rights of Children in the context of COVID-19' dated September 29, 2020, and June 2, 2021, respectively, wherein it made recommendations to the concerned authorities regarding cybercrime and online safety of children.