13/04/2011 Equality and Non-Discrimination
“There is a victim behind every child abuse image on the internet,” recalled Agustín Conde Bajén (Spain, PPE/DC), PACE rapporteur on combating child pornography, speaking today during the second meeting of the Network of Contact Parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children. “We are facing an extremely serious issue and, as parliamentarians, we should make concrete proposals to our governments to combat child pornography on the internet in the most effective way,” he stressed. “My forthcoming report will in particular take a stance on blocking child pornography websites,” he added.
John Carr, senior expert adviser, representing the European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online, advocated the deletion of images at source as the best solution to dealing with online child pornography. “Not all countries give deletion at source the priority we think it deserves,” he regretted. He thus considered blocking an important support measure, as long as it is governed by transparent laws and independently scrutinised to protect innocent web sites. “We must insist that blocking child abuse images on the internet poses no risk to freedom of expression, as is evidenced by the experience of several countries who already block access to these images, including the United Kingdom and Italy,” he said.
“Our network has 37 contact parliamentarians to date, which marks the growing involvement of national parliaments in the Council of Europe Campaign to stop sexual violence against children,” underlined Liliane Maury Pasquier (Suisse, SOC), Chairperson of the Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee, at the opening of the meeting. She welcomed Henrietta Martinez, from the Parliamentary Assembly of the “Francophonie”, the first contact parliamentarian to be appointed by an international partner parliamentary forum. She also highlighted good practices that have emerged recently in Cyprus, Serbia, and Mexico, as part of the campaign.