India will finally get an online tool next week where people can report incidents of child porn. It will be the first hotline in the country aimed at safeguarding children from sexual abuse.
SEE ALSO:Hundreds of high school girls victims of online ‘pornography ring’The hotline, which goes live Sept. 19, will be hosted on Aarambh Indiawebsite. Users will be able to report objectionable images and videos they find by filling a form on aarambhindia.org/report. The hotline will be available in Hindi and English, but eventually it will support 22 additional languages.
Aarambh India's hotline is the result of a collaboration between India’s Aarambh Initiative, a group of organizations that work on child protection in the country, and UK-based Internet Watch Foundation, an industry watchdog. Law enforcement agencies, government bodies and internet companies are also contributing to the hotline.
Users will have the option to send anonymous tips. When a user reports an offense, the IWF team in the United Kingdom assess it, and takes action accordingly. This includes removing traces of the objectionable videos and images from cyberspace, and contacting Aarambh India and local police.
The content will be assigned with a unique identity code, which would help the initiative quickly take down similar images and videos if they crop up again at a later point.
An alarming number of sex crimes against children are reported in India every month. As many as 53 percent of children surveyed by Department of Women and Child Welfarein 2007 had reported sexual assault. What makes the situation even worse is the likeliness of many such offenses going unreported.
With the advent of internet services, it has become tougher for the government and organizations to curb traces of sexual offenses. Moreover, the process of reporting child porn in India -- including who to report to -- hasn't been clear. The new initiative could significantly fix that problem.
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