Published: Tue 30 Mar 2021
People in Guatemala are being urged to “denounce” internet child sexual abuse as a new reporting portal launches giving a safe, anonymous way to help keep children safe online.
Launching today (March 30), the new tool will be a dedicated way for people in Guatemala to report images and videos of children suffering sexual abuse should they accidentally find them on the internet.
The Portal, which is available in Spanish, can be accessed at https://report.iwf.org.uk/gt.
The IWF worked alongside the Ministerio Público o Fiscalía General, (Public Prosecutor’s Office), to set up the portal, with extra support from the Office Against Child trafficking of Guatemala and crucial help from UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime).
The IWF is the UK-based international charity responsible for finding and removing images and videos of child sexual abuse from the internet.
Once reported through the new portal, images and videos will be assessed by trained IWF analysts in the UK.
If they are found to contain child sexual abuse, they can be blocked and removed from the internet.
The IWF’s partners have also created a video to show to citizens in Guatemala how to use the portal to report child sexual abuse images and videos they might see online.
Luisa Fernandez – Project Coordinator at UNODC Guatemala urged people to call out online child sexual abuse material if they see it.
She said: “You can halt online child sexual exploitation with just one click. Report and denounce it!”
Dr María Consuelo Porras Argueta, Attorney General of the Republic and head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office said: “At the Public Prosecutor’s Office, we fight strongly against the online sexual abuse of minors and today we join the IWF and UNODC in their international efforts against this crime.”
Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the IWF, said the new portal will offer a way for people to safely report illegal content, and to make sure children are kept safe on the internet.
She said: “People in Guatemala will, at last, have a dedicated and safe way to report child sexual abuse content they see on the internet. This is important, not only for keeping illegal material off the internet, but for keeping children safe and, perhaps, preventing the continuation of their suffering and abuse.
“When an image or video of a real child suffering real abuse is shared, that child is made a victim all over again. They cannot move on from the harm that has been done to them because they do not know whether this material is still out there, or who may be looking at it.
“Our analysts work flat out to make sure this does not happen, and to offer a way for victims to move on in confidence that their abuse is no longer available for predators to watch online.”
This is the IWF’s 46th IWF Portal to launch, and the 12th to be set up in Latin America. It is the 28th Global Fund sponsored Portal to launch.
IWF Portals are available in 17 languages (Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Kazakh, Lingala, Malaysian Bahasa, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian, Urdu, Wolof).
Local MP Ian Sollom learned about the herculean task faced by analysts at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) who find, assess and remove child sexual abuse material on the internet.
