Attachments
Seventy-eighth session
Agenda item 67
Promotion and protection of the rights of children
Summary
The present report is submitted pursuant to General Assembly resolution 76/147 and includes information on the status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a focus on the digital environment. In the report, the Secretary-General highlights how children’s lives and rights are increasingly connected to the digital environment and recognizes the vast potential of the digital environment for realizing children’s rights. He also calls attention to the potential harms to which the digital environment exposes children and flags the implementation gaps and barriers affecting the realization of children’s rights in the context of the digital environment, including in relation to the legislation, services and education required to ensure its safe and empowering use.
I. Introduction
1 . The present report is submitted in accordance with General Assembly resolution 76/147, in which the Assembly requested the Secretary-General to submit to it at its seventy-eighth session a comprehensive report on the rights of the child and the status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a focus on the digital environment.
The report is submitted in accordance with that request.
2 . Children account for an estimated one third of Internet users around the world. They are increasingly connected to the digital environment from younger ages and tend to have their initial experiences with digital technologies before the age of 2. Children spend increasingly more time online, relying on online tools, systems and platforms as new opportunities for realizing their rights. Such reliance was profoundly enhanced as a result of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
3 . The digital environment offers vast potential for realizing children’s rights. However, the rapid uptake and development of new digital technologies have not always been accompanied by the legislation, services and education required to ensure their safe and empowering use. The digital environment therefore also presents challenges and risks for children because their rights are rarely considered when it is designed, and children’s rights have largely been neglected in Internet governance. The digital environment can elevate the risk of exposure to harmful and untrustworthy content. It also provides new ways to perpetrate violence against children and to influence them to engage in unlawful or harmful activities. In addition, children are increasingly using digital tools that raise child rights issues related to privacy, data protection, consent, accountability and recourse.
4 . Increased reliance on the digital environment also makes the “digital divide” more visible, further exposing the multiple and multifaceted discriminations and disadvantages faced by many children, including in particular for girls and those from poorer backgrounds and other marginalized situations.
5 . Children’s access to the digital environment is uneven among countries, with disparities in access particularly striking in low-income countries and in the ability of girls or children in rural areas to access the Internet. Children further experience different barriers in accessing, using and benefiting from digital technologies based on their socioeconomic and sociocultural backgrounds. As at the end of 2020, approximately two thirds of the world’s school-age children – or 1.3 billion children aged 3 to 17 years old – did not have Internet connection in their homes. Children impacted by humanitarian crises face additional challenges in accessing the digital environment.
6 . The United Nations promoted a series of initiatives dedicated to harnessing the power of digital technologies, devices and services. The recommendations of the Highlevel Panel on Digital Cooperation led to further consultations that translated into a “Road Map for Digital Cooperation”. Based on the Secretary-General’s initiative “Our Common Agenda”, the Global Digital Compact contains recommendations on a range of issues, such as digital connectivity, including for the more than 1 billion children who do not have access. It reinforces commitments to protecting children online, ensuring governance of artificial intelligence and strengthening data protection, adopting safety policy and standards and requiring child rights impact assessments.
7 . Furthermore, the Office of the Envoy of the Secretary-General on Technology brings together various stakeholders to take forward the Secretary-General’s Road Map for Digital Cooperation in areas that include digital human rights and digital inclusion, artificial intelligence and digital trust and security.