We are honoured to have been to address this esteemed organisation on the occasion of your 10th anniversary conference on the important matter of our experiences as South Africa in dealing with the challenges of child sexual abuse, particularly on the internet.
We consider this opportunity to be of vital importance both in our endeavour to protect children as well as, towards that end, in forging strategic international partnerships. If anything is clear in our minds, it is that waging a successful campaign to combat child pornography and broader child abuse cannot be achieved by a single organisation, or within the borders of a single country.
Child abuse has become a global pervasive crime, and information and communications technology has aggravated it, ensuring that this crime transcends national borders and defies time and other limitations, it is important that strategic partnerships beyond any single national border be forged to protect all children without regard to where they are and who they are.
South Africa has joined the rest of the world in acknowledging the importance of adopting a proactive approach to fighting child pornography and all forms of child abuse. To this end, we have adopted laws that protect children from all forms of abuse, such as the Films and Publications Act, the Children’s Act and the Sexual Offences Act. All these acts constitute a battery of legislation aimed at protecting our children from all forms of abuse.
When they were drafted, great care was taken to ensure they were consistent with each other and helped us to tackle what is an increasing international challenge. The Films and Publications Amendment Act, amongst others, establishes the Films and Publication Board which is mandated to monitor and classify images that would portray children involved in sexual acts.
The Films and Publications Board itself is a 12 year old organisation. The fact that a developing country in Africa decided 12 years ago to establish an organisation of this nature to tackle the challenges such as of this nature was not just visionary, but was an acknowledgement of the rising nature of this challenge right in our country as much as it was an acknowledgement of the reality of our globalising and fast integrating world. The challenges posed by the latter are phenomenal, they are positive as they are negative.
It is a fact that whilst massive benefits can be had from the globalisation and the information communication technology revolution, incredible negativity also accompanies what is but an extraordinary human achievement, requiring that strict national regulations and cross border cooperation, both at cyber space level and even elsewhere, be established so that we can tackle the challenges that we are increasingly facing.
When we established the Films and Publications Board (FPB) in South Africa, we were “thinking globally and acting locally” and when we sought the membership of INHOPE we were then “thinking locally and acting globally”. In today’s world, there is almost no dividing line between the local and the global; one can tread both spheres with a single step. Indeed, criminals are aware of this. A single crime they commit within any single national border could have massive global consequences, for the victims, the global community as well as for their global market. Unfortunately, because crime is not recognised as a legitimate trade, there are no global rules and governance structures established to regulate its conduct.
Together, as the global community, whatever global rules and governance structures we have established are to facilitate legitimate trade and to combat and eradicate global crime. Accordingly, much as global trade and policy making has needed increased effort towards global rules and governance structures, so is fighting crime of all sorts.
In South Africa, even though government had long established the FPB, yet one of the least known and spoken about crimes of child abuse is that of child pornography. Unlike other crimes it exists where it cannot be easily detected. However, we have all along been of the view that the fact that a person or groups of people do not know about it does not mean it is not happening.
The sad fact is, child pornography is happening in South Africa in an increasing scale, not only at the level of the possession and distribution of the material classified as child pornography, but also at the level of the actual physical abuse of South African children in the production of such material.
In adopting the Films and Publications Act and establishing the Films and Publications Board, we were taking a view so very inherent in African tradition that “every child is my child”, thus making a firm statement that every child, no matter where in this world they are, is our child; and we regarded it as our duty to protect those children by both prohibiting the distribution of any material in our country containing illicit and degrading images of those children as well as punishing those involved in such acts.
In African communities that still adhere to traditional principles, when we said that we regard every child as my child, we meant that raising children according to correct norms and standards was the duty of the community as a whole. We meant that educating and protecting children from any sort of abuse was the duty of the community as a whole. Yet, we are aware that this new world in whose dangerous frontiers we find ourselves today does not subscribe to those standards, norms and mores. Today’s society can prey on its children.
In terms of the Films and Publications Act, child pornography refers to the pornographic images involving children below the age of 18 years. In defines child pornography to include “any image, real or simulated, however created, or any description, of a person who is, or who is depicted or described as being, under the age of 18 years:
* Engaged in sexual conduct, or
* Assisting another person to engage in sexual conduct, or
* Showing or describing the body, or parts of the body, of such a person in a manner or in circumstances which, within context, amounts to sexual exploitation, or in such a manner that it is capable of being used for the purposes of sexual exploitation”.
According to the act, it is also an offence to possess, create, produce, distribute, import, access, advertise or promote child pornography images. Each of these acts carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. Failure to report knowledge of child pornography images to the police is also an offence. It is also an offence to expose children to pornography. Even if one commits any of these acts outside South Africa, you may be prosecuted when you return to South Africa.
The Films and Publications Act was further amended last year to make the investigation and prosecution of child pornography offenders more effective. The act has taken radical steps to provide a broad definition of child pornography and to impose harsher sentences on the culprits.
We regard child pornography essentially as child abuse and a violation of the childhood, the innocence and the rights of the children. Beyond the image of child pornography is the child that has been sexually abused for real and even if it is a simulated image, it signifies all children who stand the risk of being sexually abused for real.
What is worse about it is that the actual crime of child abuse continues beyond the actual physical abuse of the child, it continues to live on the web, videos, computer disks and photographs or other images as it is circulated from one person or groups of people to the next. The abuse of the child does not end when their physical abuse ends; it continues to live in other equally degrading and violent right through infinity. Of course, we are not here to lecture you about child pornography and child abuse on the internet and the broader cyber space. We believe you know more about this than we do, and we have a lot to learn from your experiences and expertise.
Since its establishment, the FPB has engaged in a number of activities to combat this scourge. Among these are regular surveys it conducts and make available to the public so that it can inform the public about the dangers and challenges we have as a society. The regular surveys, which I hope you can find on the FPB website, broadly indicate a worrying trend of:
* increasing accessibility of pornography in general to South African children, through all sorts of media such as the internet and mobile phones, and
* increasing sexual abuse images of children to produce pornography.
As well as the surveys, the FPB launched in 2005 a telephone hotline to report cases of child pornography, and then in 2008 launched an internet hotline to achieve the same goals. The internet hotline both enables reporting and also informs the public and the users about this challenge, as well as educates the public about how to combat this crime and protect children. As South Africa prepares to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, we cannot ignore the likelihood of the sexual exploitation of children during this spectacular event.
During previous world cup events hosted in Greece (2004) and Germany (2006) an exceptional growth in the demand for sexual services was experienced which included the sexual exploitation of children. It is estimated that the 2010 FIFA World Cup will create conditions that will increase the vulnerability of children and provide opportunities for abusers, exploiters, traffickers, collectors of child pornography and paedophiles to fulfil their ignoble business whilst pretending to be soccer fans.
We have been busy in this regard, working together with the police, the Local Organising Committee (LOC), business, and other non-governmental organisations, developing strategies to be ready for paedophiles when the 2010 FIFA World Cup takes place. The expected economic gain will fuel and increase the demand and supply factors that place children risk to provide cheap and exploitative labour, sexual and other services. It is also feared that the expected economic gain will increase rural child migration, children surviving and living on the street, increase in children begging from locals and foreigners or forced to sell goods to them.
These will be worsened by the increase in the use of internet, social networking forums and cell phones. In this context the hotline will help a great deal in exposing these abuses. In pursuit of this, we appointed a broad representative ministerial task team against child pornography to forge strategic partnerships with mobile phone operators and internet service providers, the public broadcaster and other government and non-governmental institutions and to harness our collective energies, wisdom and resources towards this common objective.
In pursuit of forging international partnerships, the FPB also applied for the membership of International Association of Internet Hotline (INHOPE), which was granted provisionally earlier this year, thus making the FPB the first African classification authority both to have an anti-child pornography internet hotline and become a member of INHOPE, which membership we hope will be made permanent.
This will assist the FPB enormously to exchange information about illegal content with other INHOPE members worldwide thereby incredibly enhancing its capability to respond to reports of suspected illegal websites. The international networking with INHOPE will allow South Africa to take action against images of child sexual abuse images on the internet which are hosted outside South Africa.
The INHOPE membership has enabled the FPB internet hotline to access international working relations and referral systems, research, training and international best practice to intensify the fight against child pornography. The website, a first of its kind on the African continent, is also intended to alert internet service providers of criminal activities, relating to child pornography and or sexual abuse images hosted on their servers or distributed through their infrastructure.
Interaction with various members of INHOPE has highlighted the need for a universal and commonly accepted definition of child pornography and where possible harmonisation of international legislation. This will assist in ensuring that swift action is taken to address any child pornography reported on the platforms of the various hotlines globally. The FPB has established facilities for online as well as telephonic reporting of child pornography through a toll-free line and a website. Dedicated content analysts have been appointed to investigate alleged child pornography reported on the hotline.
In order for this internet hotline to be effective, strategic partnerships with the law enforcement agencies locally have been established to facilitate action taken on reported cases. Among others, we have met with other Ministers responsible for Police, Justice and Social Development to explore signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the various departments to streamline our work in this regard. We are already discussing a first draft of this MOU.
Since joining INHOPE in May 2009, 45 cases were reported to the FPB internet hotline. 33 percent of these were confirmed to be child pornography according to the South African legislation, and swift action was taken on these cases by referring them to the police, internet service providers to block websites on their networks, and INHOPE members, in cases where websites are not hosted in South Africa. 66 percent of child pornography cases received were referred to INHOPE members for further management and action. We need to continuously work on feedback mechanisms to improve our interventions and responses.
Meanwhile, the objectives of the campaign to curb child pornography and inappropriate and easy access to pornography were further bolstered by the Department of Public Service and Administration’s request to State Information Technology Agency (SITA) to:
* monitor usage of the internet by government employees
* implement filters that will deny access by government employees to web content that is deemed inappropriate, such as pornography, audio or video, and others, and
* investigate the implementation of SPAM filters.
Every government department and province is expected to develop and implement an internet and electronic mail management policy and the Department of Public Service and Administration will develop a general internet usage framework policy for guidance to departments. We have urged private sector companies to implement similar measures to curb child pornography and inappropriate easy access to pornography by their employees.
In conclusion, we would like to thank INHOPE for the support given to us since we became part of this family. Once again happy 10th anniversary!
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Home Affairs
4 November 2009
Source: Department of Home Affairs (http://www.dha.gov.za/)
