Society

FENADEB to combat child pornography online

Burundi National federation of Child Rights Organizations- FENADEB, in partnership with Internet Watch Foundation-IWF, has launched this 4 September a new reporting portal to combat the international cybercrime and online proliferation of child pornography in Burundi.

Jacques Nshimirimana: “People in Burundi can now report child sexual abuse encountered online”.

Jacques Nshimirimana: “People in Burundi can now report child sexual abuse encountered online”.

Jacques Nshimirimana, chairman of FENADEB, says people can now report child sexual abuse encountered online. “Anyone in Burundi can now report to the IWF experts, images or videos of child sexual abuse encountered online, via a new reporting portal in a confidential manner”.

He says this program marks a significant step in making internet safer for all Burundians. “By setting up a mechanism enabling citizens to report images and videos that could constitute child pornography, the country is making the internet harmless to its entire population”.

Mr.Nshimirimana says there have been some cases of online child sexual abuse in the past years in Burundi and this will help prevent such cases before the number goes up. “In 2014, there are Burundian adolescents’ images that were published. In 2017, other sexual images of Burundian teenagers who study in Canada were broadcast. We want to sensitize people to the great importance in reporting these kinds of images before it is too late”, he says.

IWF reporting portals are online forms that internet users can use to report child sexual abuse images and videos that they may encounter at random during their browsing.

Mr.Nshimirimana says the reporting is done anonymously and safely. “It will be reported to UK-based analysts who then analyze the reports and remove any content deemed illegal”, he says adding that the reporting procedure is simple: “just go to https://report.iwf.org.uk/bi and follow instructions”.

Burundi is the third country in the sub-Saharan Africa (after Tanzania and the DRC) to benefit from a program designed to strengthen technical means that treat reports of child pornography online.

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