A new global campaign against on- and offline child pornography has been launched by the International Centre for Missing& Exploited Children, with a lot of help from Microsoft and Black Entertainment Television founder Sheila Johnson, who sits on the ICMEC board. Both Johnson and Microsoft have contributed $500,000 to the effort.
The new campaign was launched at an April 22 press conference which included Interpol secretary general Ronald K. Noble and a number of representatives from international law enforcement, child advocacy groups, and individuals. Called the Dublin Plan, the campaign's aims include the creation of an international child porn monitoring and oversight system, the development of new systems to identify child porn victims, giving law enforcement agencies more enhancement to probe and prosecute child porn, and developing "model legislation" to bring more consistency between individual nations' child porn laws.
"The Internet knows no geographical borders and recognizes no jurisdictional boundaries," Noble said at the campaign launch. "And neither do the criminals who use it to exploit children. Only through worldwide collaborations and partnerships like the ones we see here today can we rescue the world's children from this kind of exploitation."
Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine - who says the adult entertainment industry itself spends at least half a million a year through numerous activities on the child porn fight - applauded Johnson and Microsoft for their donations to the Dublin Plan. "Child pornography is an international problem," Irvine told AVNOnline.com. "This, the effort to eliminate it must be global. They are joining the effort of many others who have been involved in this battle for years, including ASACP."
The ICMEC said their own CyberTipline brought forth over 200,000 reports of Internet child porn in 2003, while the U.S. Justice Department suggested one in five children between 10-17 years old has received an unwanted sexual solicitation in cyberspace.
Johnson's and Microsoft's donations have already gone toward more law enforcement training in child porn fighting, including four-day training sessions in France to fight computer-assisted crimes against children and a second such session in Costa Rica, with over three hundred law enforcement officials taking part in those sessions. The plan, the ICMEC said, was to get as many as ten such four-day sessions a year
"To combat global networks of child pornographers, we must all become a global network of child protectors," Johnson said at the press conference. "The sexual victimization of children -- a problem that is overwhelming in magnitude yet largely unrecognized and underreported -- demands our immediate, collective and global action."
Microsoft deputy general counsel Nancy Anderson agreed. "It is critical that the Internet, the source of so much benefit for students and educators, not be undermined by those who harm children," she said. "Sheila has brought all of us together to not just talk about this issue, but to actually do something about it. And the doing has already begun. The Internet must remain a place that is safe and conducive to learning, not an instrument for criminals."
The Dublin Plan also got a vote of approval from a U.S. lawmaker. "This is a growing problem that needs to be addressed," said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). "It is going to take resources and public awareness to combat child pornography. I commend this unique collaboration of people for taking on this fight."
