Experts call for global drive to boost child safety

University experts have contributed evidence to a global call for a new approach to safeguard vulnerable children.

Group of delegates at a conference
Supporters of the declaration at the Emory University Conference Center

Thirty of the world's leading figures in child protection have signed the 'Atlanta Declaration' asking for child exploitation and sexual abuse to be treated as a global public health emergency.

Protecting children

The initiative, led by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, hosted by the universities of Edinburgh and New South Wales, and the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), envisages a shift in the global approach to these crimes.

If adopted, it would compel governments to respond to child sexual abuse not merely as a criminal justice issue, but as a preventable pandemic — akin to the worldwide campaigns that successfully tackled smallpox, COVID-19 and tobacco-related deaths.

The proposal was endorsed at a conference hosted by Emory University in Atlanta, USA, with backing from figures from the World Health Organization, the European Parliament, and leading universities across Scotland, Australia, the United States, China and the Philippines.

Recent estimates

It follows a recent estimate from Childlight that more than 300 million children annually are subjected to technology-facilitated sexual abuse and exploitation alone. 

These include cases of grooming and sexual extortion where children are blackmailed over intimate images. Many more are also subjected to contact abuse.

The Atlanta Declaration, backed by the health experts at the Bridging the Sciences conference in the American city, states that all forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse constitute a global public health emergency, compromising the safety, development, and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of children annually.

It says it is time to respond with the urgency and coordination this crisis demands — through a prevention-oriented public health approach grounded in empirical evidence and multisectoral collaboration.

Childlight CEO Paul Stanfield said that, just as immunisation is a more effective strategy than treating the symptoms of disease, the primary objective in addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) must be prevention.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse needs to be treated for what it is: a global public health emergency.  

This is a crisis of unimaginable scale yet all too often it remains unseen, unspoken and unprioritised. We cannot continue to respond to this emergency with the tools of the past – treating it as a niche issue for law enforcement or technology alone to manage. That approach has failed and children are paying the price.

Professor Elena Martellozzo, director of Childlight’s European hub at the University of Edinburgh, highlighted multiple examples of promising preventive measures that are helping to tackle child sexual exploitation and abuse. These ranged from educational programmes for children, parents and carers to laws on internet safety. But she warned that for many governments it was still not a priority.

Supporters of the declaration hope it will act as a springboard, gathering momentum globally and helping persuade governments and other authorities to prioritise prevention measures.

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