The emergence of Information and Communication Technology has created numerous opportunities and made it easier for children and young people in Africa to communicate, connect, share, learn, access information and express their opinions on matters that affect their lives and their communities with the rest of the world. But this phenomenon also poses significant challenges to children’s safety and wellbeing – both online and offline. The need to create an enabling environment for children and young people in Africa is a collective responsibility for all stakeholders. It is against this background Child Online Africa(COA) and the African Telecommunication Union (ATU) have decided to bring to everyone a means to engage on how to create a better world and the tool to make that happen is the Africa Week of Action for Child Online Protection.

Africa Week of Action for Child Online Protection (AWA4COP) is a call to action on all African countries coordinated by Child Online Africa (COA) as one of the implementation partners for ITU to keep the momentum on creating awareness for Child Online Protection until the whole continent is saturated with the issue. From the last Africa Safer Internet Day celebration, the participants called for more engagements on the issues of child online safety in Africa especially on the back of the GC.25 of the UNCRC. From hindsight, we saw that there is less information and education materials on the issue of child safety as it manifests in Africa. It is expected that appropriate actions taken at the country level in terms of legislation, technical procedures, infrastructure, the necessary cooperation with other organizations, governments on online safety among other practical solutions to the issue.

Why This Campaign

• Child Online Protection initiative implementation is at the infant stage and so is capacity and awareness creation in Africa.
• Stakeholder participation and responsiveness is not encouraging.
• We want to cease the opportunity being the week before the celebration of the AU Day of the African Child to Make Child Online Protection Visible.

Objective

The overarching objective of the campaign is to secure and increase public awareness and implementation challenges.

Foster a culture of COP with all relevant stakeholders, including children themselves, through knowledge sharing and digital skills development.

Increase related policies development to build human and institutional COP capacity at all levels while sharing experience gained with Member States.

Make COP Visible

“Make Child Online Protection Visible” which is to happen during the Africa Week of Action for Child Online Protection is to call for an effective system for the Online environment regarding the African Child. This will facilitate a rallying point for Civil society/NGOs to share their experiences and stories and call for urgent action to prioritize Child Online Protection.

Call to Action

We are uniting behind the Call to Action reminding Africa states to:

• Develop a national strategy for Child Online Protection to include actions to be taken against perpetrators of violence and abuse of children.
• Build capacity for frontline workers regarding online-related risks.
• Initiate a multistakeholder approach for country-level implementation of strategies.
• Ensure a dedicated and easy-to-use channel for reporting incidents and counseling.
• Commit resources to the various sectors of Child Protection to mainstream Online Safety concerns while making it effective.
• Create general awareness for children & young people about the rights online as stipulated in General Comments No.25.
• Listen and respond to the voices of those affected. Enabling environment created for individuals and civil society to voice their concerns and seek redress.

Justification

Since the pandemic, there have been recommendations in a number of researches speaking to the impact of the pandemic on children and young people and these were not without online abuses. The call by ACERWC, research recommendations from Plan International, World Vision International, UNICEF, Save the children among others has appealed for provisions to safeguard children online.

Ways to engage with the Week of Action campaign

Joining the hashtag and make a noise!

Watch and share the “Make COP Visible” Campaign materials on the website.

Use the social media frame to share your voice and call on others to do the same using #AWA4COP

Use the letters to lobby your government representatives to take action.

Sharing stories of Respect, Kindness, Resilience, empathy, Law enforcement, and legislation, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of these will be shared on the Child Online Africa social media platforms and will form a pool of stories and campaign content.

Write articles, art and cartoon work, poems, short videos that focus on how you and or your community value a comprehensive child protection system and other related challenges.

You can use the campaign visuals available on the site.

Keep doing what you are doing and let us know!

The campaign aims to promote child protection work being done by other organizations all over Africa in child online protection and to also provide an opportunity for others to mainstream online protection impact under one collective banner