On Thursday 20th June, on the margins of the 30th Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) plenary meeting in Strasbourg, experts from the T-CY attended a workshop on the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote Convention) facilitated by the Lanzarote Committee legal advisors.
The Lanzarote Convention, which entered into force in 2010, is the most holistic international treaty for the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. It contains provisions on prevention, protection, prosecution and promotion of national and international cooperation. The discussion focused on the benefits, for States, of joining the Lanzarote Convention including: political commitment to combat child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, stronger legal frameworks, increased protection of victims, enhanced international co-operation as well as access to capacity building programmes.
The treaty is open for accession by any country and is fully compatible and complementary with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, its optional protocols as well as the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention). The complementarity of the Lanzarote and Cybercrime Conventions was already highlighted in the Mapping study on cyberviolence whose recommendations were adopted by the T-CY in 2018.
More specifically, while the Lanzarote Convention requires States to criminalise all forms of sexual abuse of a child and provides practical guidance to ensure that victims are protected throughout investigations and prosecutions, including rules on gathering witness evidence, safeguarding the child and access to victim support, the Budapest Convention and its Second Protocol provides for procedural powers and the tools for international and cross-border cooperation that can be used to investigate these crimes. This broad scope of powers for the collection of electronic evidence and international cooperation of the Budapest Convention and its Second Protocol was reconfirmed by the Cybercrime Convention Committee in a guidance note adopted by the T-CY in June 2023.
"Emerging technologies: threats and opportunities for the protection of children from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse” will be the focus of the annual Day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse marked on 18 November each year. Take action on the 18th November to raise awareness about the risks of child sexual abuse and the steps children and adults can take to protect children, seek help if a child is victimised and report abuse to facilitate investigations.