Webinars, online meetings, remote working models, online friendships and online networking. Everything is just a click away now. While we strive to adapt ourselves to the new era of digitalisation, our children are born into it with pure innocence and vulnerability.
So, are we well prepared to protect children against a wide range of online threats including but not limited to grooming, sexual extortion or any other types of online abuse facilitated by information and communication technologies?
It is more important than ever to enhance the required knowledge, skills and capacities of law enforcement, judges and prosecutors for effective and successful investigation, prosecution and conviction of online child sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as the capacity of legal professionals to apply European human rights standards in the field of criminal justice. To achieve these objectives, an online training course on Countering Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse was organised on 23-25 February 2021, by the Council of Europe projects End Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse @ Europe (EndOCSEA@Europe), the iPROCEEDS-2 project, and the EU/CoE Joint Project Strengthening the Criminal Justice System and the Capacity of Justice Professionals on Prevention of the European Convention on Human Rights Violations in Turkey.
The training targeted candidate judges and prosecutors in Turkey with the aim of increasing their knowledge and awareness of national and international legislation and reactive measures that are used in investigations of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Gathering more than 190 participants, the training provided for exchange of information and opinion between participants, national and international experts as well as representatives from the Turkish Ministry of Justice and Turkish Justice Academy.
Please see the agenda of the meeting for further details.
Acknowledgements:
The Council of Europe gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for this programme by the End Violence Fund.
