Don't Just Ban — Fix It: Demand Real Protection for Sri Lankan Children Online
The Issue
Sri Lankan children are being groomed, sexually extorted, and exploited online right now. Parliament's response — a minimum age of 16 for social media — sounds decisive. The evidence says it won't work.
This isn't hypothetical. It's happening as this petition is written. Sri Lanka Police arrested 41 suspects in the Mount Lavinia case on charges of child sex trafficking, statutory rape, and related offences involving a 15-year-old victim. A separate case, currently before the Anuradhapura Chief Magistrate's Court, involves allegations of grave sexual abuse of a minor — and child-rights monitors have already flagged serious gaps in how the state is protecting that child's interests through the prosecution itself. These are not edge cases. They are what the system looks like right now, under the laws we already have.
Australia already tried the fix currently on the table here. Its own government evaluation found more than 85% of under-16s were still using "banned" platforms three months later, because checking a birthdate stops nobody. A ban that can't be enforced doesn't protect a single child — it just lets everyone say something was done.
Two things would actually help, and neither is currently law:
Close the legal gap. Grooming isn't even a codified crime in Sri Lanka yet. Perpetrators can't always be prosecuted for it because the law hasn't caught up. This is fixable quickly — the legal groundwork already exists.
Require verified identity for every account, not an age check on kids. The predators reaching children online right now don't have to defeat an age gate — they just have to be anonymous. Remove the anonymity, and you remove the cover that makes this possible.
We're asking Parliament to:
Fund and appoint the Online Safety Commission that already exists on paper under the 2024 Act
Amend the Penal Code and Computer Crimes Act to codify grooming and computer-generated CSAM as prosecutable offences
Require platform accountability through verified identity, not a self-declared birthdate that protects no one
Resource the NCPA's Anti-Trafficking Surveillance Unit, currently handling over 900 complaints a month without the staffing to match
This isn't an attack on the people already doing this work — the NCPA has flagged its own resourcing gap to Parliament, and researchers here have been documenting this problem for years. This petition asks the government to finish what's already been started.
Sign if you believe a ban that doesn't work isn't protection. Sign if you want Sri Lanka to lead with a fix that actually closes the gap.
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The Issue
Sri Lankan children are being groomed, sexually extorted, and exploited online right now. Parliament's response — a minimum age of 16 for social media — sounds decisive. The evidence says it won't work.
This isn't hypothetical. It's happening as this petition is written. Sri Lanka Police arrested 41 suspects in the Mount Lavinia case on charges of child sex trafficking, statutory rape, and related offences involving a 15-year-old victim. A separate case, currently before the Anuradhapura Chief Magistrate's Court, involves allegations of grave sexual abuse of a minor — and child-rights monitors have already flagged serious gaps in how the state is protecting that child's interests through the prosecution itself. These are not edge cases. They are what the system looks like right now, under the laws we already have.
Australia already tried the fix currently on the table here. Its own government evaluation found more than 85% of under-16s were still using "banned" platforms three months later, because checking a birthdate stops nobody. A ban that can't be enforced doesn't protect a single child — it just lets everyone say something was done.
Two things would actually help, and neither is currently law:
Close the legal gap. Grooming isn't even a codified crime in Sri Lanka yet. Perpetrators can't always be prosecuted for it because the law hasn't caught up. This is fixable quickly — the legal groundwork already exists.
Require verified identity for every account, not an age check on kids. The predators reaching children online right now don't have to defeat an age gate — they just have to be anonymous. Remove the anonymity, and you remove the cover that makes this possible.
We're asking Parliament to:
Fund and appoint the Online Safety Commission that already exists on paper under the 2024 Act
Amend the Penal Code and Computer Crimes Act to codify grooming and computer-generated CSAM as prosecutable offences
Require platform accountability through verified identity, not a self-declared birthdate that protects no one
Resource the NCPA's Anti-Trafficking Surveillance Unit, currently handling over 900 complaints a month without the staffing to match
This isn't an attack on the people already doing this work — the NCPA has flagged its own resourcing gap to Parliament, and researchers here have been documenting this problem for years. This petition asks the government to finish what's already been started.
Sign if you believe a ban that doesn't work isn't protection. Sign if you want Sri Lanka to lead with a fix that actually closes the gap.
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Petition created on August 25, 2026