Published: Thu 24 Oct 2013
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) launches its international work by announcing a partnership with Mauritius.
IWF will provide Mauritius with an Online Child Sexual Abuse Reporting Portal (OCSARP) to enable their digital citizens to report one of the most abhorrent types of criminal content on the internet.
All reports made by people living in Mauritius will be assessed by the IWF’s Internet Content Analysts based in the Cambridge in the UK.
The IWF operates one of the world’s most successful Hotlines regarding the assessment and removal of child sexual abuse content.
IWF, together with the online industry, has created a hostile environment for hosting this type of criminal content in the UK.
Fred Langford, IWF Director of Global Operations said: “I congratulate Mauritius in taking such proactive, positive steps in the fight against online child sexual abuse content.
“The benefits of OCSARP to countries are multiple. For instance, it means people in Mauritius will have a gold standard service to report potentially criminal child sexual abuse content to. Our Analysts will then use their established networks with the online industry, other countries all over the world and the police to get that content removed from the internet.
“It is also strong message for those who persist in attempting to distribute child sexual abuse images and videos; Mauritius is hostile to this.
“At the IWF we would like other countries to learn the lessons we learned in the UK nearly 18 years ago. Don’t wait until the problem of child sexual abuse content grows on your networks before taking action.Before the IWF was founded, 18% of the known worldwide child sexual abuse content was hosted in the UK. Since 2003 this has been less than 1%.
“Our aim is to eliminate online child sexual abuse content and we can only do this by working with others internationally. By launching OCSARP – our Online Child Sexual Abuse Reporting Portal for other countries -we will make more of a difference.”
The launched was marked with a press conference hosted today in Mauritius with the Mauritian Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) in collaboration with the Ministry of ICT.
Find out more about OCSARP here https://www.iwf.org.uk/partnerships/international-reporting-solution
Notes to editors:
Photographs of the press conference in Mauritius have been Tweeted @IWFhotline Opens in New Window.
Contact Information:
Emma Lowther, Director of External Relations
+44 (0) 1223 203030 or +44 (0) 7929 553679
@IWF_Emma
About the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
The IWF is a charity and was established in 1996 by the internet industry to provide the UK internet Hotline for the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way. The Hotline service can be used anonymously to report content within our remit:
child sexual abuse images hosted anywhere in the world;
criminally obscene adult content hosted in the UK;
non-photographic child sexual abuse images hosted in the UK.
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The IWF is a charity and is part of the UK Safer Internet Centre.
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.
