Abuse material of children is circulating at an alarming rate, in 2021 there were 29 million global reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation.

This needs to change.

We demand that European Union takes a world-leading stance and votes in favour of the current EU proposal to better prevent and combat child sexual abuse, so that we can protect all children and have justice for survivors

We want the EU to step up its efforts to support and assist survivors of child sexual abuse.

To that end:

We support the Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual abuse, proposed by the Commission on 11 May 2022, and we call for its swift adoption. In particular, we call for:

• the adoption of the proposed obligations for online service providers to prevent, detect, report and remove online child sexual abuse, to put an end to the continuous re-victimisation of survivors, and enable the swift rescue of victims from ongoing or imminent abuse;
• the creation of the proposed EU Centre to prevent and combat child sexual abuse, empowered to facilitate the effective assistance and support of survivors throughout the Union.

We call for the EU to include in the future revision of the 2011 Directive on combatting child sexual abuse obligations for Member States to:

• ensure that effective mechanisms to report child sexual abuse are in place and that effective investigative tools are deployed to identify victims and rescue them as soon as possible from ongoing abuse;
• ensure that the criminal statue of limitation in child sexual abuse cases is extended as much as possible;
• officially recognise survivors who have suffered any form of child sexual abuse or exploitation;
• conform to best international standards and practices in relation to acknowledgment, reappraisal and apology of past abuses and forms of reparation.