Urgent need to counter paedophilia on the net stressed

Urgent need to counter paedophilia on the net stressed
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

BRUSSELS, MARCH 19: Too little is being done to combat paedophilia on the Internet, according to participants to an international conference in Brussels on child abuse. Laws need to be put in sync, law enforcement agencies need to work more closely with the courts, and Internet service providers must take bolder action to counter the trend, they said.

"Shocking photos of Princess Diana or Bill Clinton must be pulled off the Internet immediately" when the courts intervene, said Don Fortunato di Noto, an Italian priest who tracks down child porn on the Internet. "But sadly, we are unable to force the removal of pictures of millions of abused children," he said.

"Children are tired of talk. Action needs to be taken now." Judges, police officers, child welfare activists and Internet operators all took part in Friday's international forum on the fight against paedophilia on the Internet.

The event was sponsored by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the World Association of Friends of Childhood to size up the scale of the problem. It preceded a court appearance on Monday by Marc Dutroux, accused of kidnapping, abusing and killing four girls in Belgium before his arrest in August 1996.

While his trial on those charges is still pending, Dutroux will be appearing in Neufchateau for crimes he allegedly committed after he escaped from detention in April 1998. Judge Guy Verbeeren, a member of Belgium's computer crime unit, said the Dutroux affair "made our police services aware how important it is to be involved with the Internet."

"But there is a gap between the dynamic aspect of the Internet, and the slowness of legislation," he said. "Just as there are tax havens, so too there are Internet havens, thanks to countries that have not taken legislative steps," Verbeeren said. "A suspect site can suddenly disappear, then reappear from another country with exactly the same content."

Guy de Vel, director general of judicial affairs at the 41-nation Council of Europe, bemoaned the shortcomings of international law, as well as the fact that a 1996 conference in Stockholm on the sexual exploitation of children for commercial ends has never been followed up.

The Council of Europe, which sits in Strasbourg, France, adopted in 1991 a non-binding resolution condemning child prostitution, trafficking in children and their sexual exploitation. But a decade later, he said, the text "no longer responds to current imperatives."

De Vel said Belgium is pushing the council to adopt a convention on the issue that can serve as a basis for international law. "We will do all we can for this convention to be adopted in 2001," he said. Better, more coherent laws seemed more of an urgent matter, as Internet service providers tend to play down the idea of intervening.

"Blocking or destroying illegal is work for the police," said Camille de Stempel, security Chief at AOL Europe. "International judicial cooperation is indispensible because we cannot breach the privacy of our subscribers," added Jean-Christophe Le Toquin of the European Internet service providers' association Eurosipa. "Judicial tools are required for this," he said.

Fortunato said that according to his research, 45 per cent of Internet servers containing paedophilia are in North America. Twenty per cent in Asia, 13 per cent in eastern Europe, 10 per cent in South America, seven per cent in western Europe, and five per cent in the Middle East, he said.