The safety net – Policy requirements

No child should be subjected to paid sexual abuse. To prevent this and ensure protection and support for children who are victims, ChildX calls for the following:

1. Develop the identification and outreach of child victims of paid abuse

In order to identify more, it is necessary that the competent authorities are tasked with developing routine questions about commercial sexual exploitation for student health services, social services and child and adolescent psychiatry. The police authority should also be tasked with developing methodological support for its outreach work and broadening the outreach work to include more digital platforms.

2. Implement a national awareness-raising campaign on the commercial sexual exploitation of children involving the professionals who work with the target group

The awareness raising should include information on the rights of vulnerable children, how to deal with the target group, the causes and consequences of exploitation and the actions needed to prevent and stop exploitation.

3. Sweden must work for an effective international framework to combat online child abuse

Online actors provide a new infrastructure that enables perpetrators to expose children and disseminate abuse material on a large scale. Despite this, there are currently no laws requiring them to combat child sexual abuse on their platforms.

A process is now underway in the EU to get a regulatory framework in place. We want the Swedish government to take a clear position to put in place a law that provides children with adequate and effective protection and ensures that internet actors work to find, prevent and stop abuse on and through the internet. This must happen urgently.