India’s Just Rights for Children (JRC) Alliance Shines at WeProtect Global Summit 2024

In a significant acknowledgement of India’s leadership in combating online sexual abuse of children, the ‘WeProtect’ Global Summit 2024 in UAE invited India’s Just Rights for Children (JRC) alliance to showcase the “new narrative and lessons from India”. This milestone follows the recent landmark judgment by the Supreme Court, which declared even the downloading and storage of child pornography an offence while hearing a petition filed by JRC against a Madras High Court order. The JRC, an alliance of 250 NGO partners operating across 416 districts, has been pivotal in driving key legal victories and transforming child protection laws in India. The alliance is also working in Nepal, Kenya and the United States of America.

The WeProtect Global Alliance’s 2024 Global Summit, co-hosted by the Ministry of Interior of the United Arab Emirates and themed ‘Focus on the Future,’ took place in Abu Dhabi. Over 600 multidisciplinary stakeholders from around the world, in person and online, came together to discuss and tackle the most pressing challenges in safeguarding children in the digital age. Some of the key speakers at the Summit were Lt. Col. Dana Humaid AlMarzooqi, Director General of the International Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Interior, United Arab Emirates; Nina Jane Patel, Futurist and Tech Advocate; Courtney Gregoire, Vice President, Chief Digital Safety Officer, Microsoft; John Buckley, Lead Child Safety Policy Strategist, Google and Chelsea Carlson, Child Safety TPM, OpenAI. Bhuwan Ribhu from Just Rights for Children alliance who represented India on the global platform is one of India’s most prolific lawyers and has led to transformative changes in the policy and law in the country. In the past two decades, through more than 60 strategic public interest litigations and other cases, he has spearheaded the criminalisation of the child protection response in the country leading to advancement of existing laws and formulation of new laws on women and children.

Delivering a powerful keynote on the second day of the Summit, Just Rights for Children alliance founder Bhuwan Ribhu underscored the urgent need for a global response to the borderless crime of child sexual abuse. “Online sexual abuse of children is a borderless crime and it requires a borderless response. Let us have an international database with an internationally binding instrument which shares all the data and information of all the sex offenders who exist. When these criminals are united in their approach and are organized criminals committing the crime in an organized way, our response cannot be disorganized,” Child Rights activist and Just Rights for Children alliance Founder Bhuwan Ribhu said in his address.

He further said, “The culture of impunity for child rape must end and a new culture of accountability and consciousness rooted in policy parity must emerge.”

Calling for change and collective action from the entire global community, he said, “Right now each one of us is living in fear our children are not safe... If a child is living in fear, we need to do more. Society will judge us on what we do today... The world will collectively face this and win."

More than 300 million children a year are estimated to be victims of online sexual abuse and exploitation around the world. Meanwhile, with over 900 million internet users in India, the country has become a crucial consumer as well as producer of the Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM).

The Summit convened top government officials, tech innovators, child protection experts, and survivor advocates to discuss and explore tangible solutions to create a world where children are safeguarded from sexual exploitation and abuse online. The “WeProtect’ Alliance is the largest and most diverse global movement dedicated to ending child sexual exploitation and abuse online.