3rd Meeting, 12th Session GIEE on the Implementation of the Durban Declaration

Excellencies, distinguished experts and participants, I hereby declare open the third public meeting of the twelfth session of the group of independent expert on the implementation of the Daban Declaration and Program of Actions. The distinguished expert and participant, I am Dr. Salome Bugua, the chairperson of the group of independent eminent expert. I am here with my other expert, Mr. Aguilar, Abbasindakan and Professor Joel Mondili. Yesterday we finished the session with a great session commemorating the 25th anniversary, commemorating these 25 years of DDPA, strengthening implementation and crossing the gap. This morning we will begin with a thematic discussion titled Addressing Racism in Digital Spaces and Advancing Education to Safeguard Youth, which will be facilitated by my distinguished colleague Abbasindakan. Abbasindakan, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Distinguished participants and delegates, I am actually deeply honored to moderate this important session, important discussion. The topic of today's panel discussion, addressing racism in digital spaces and advancing education to safeguard youth, reveals two imminent but highly complex dimensions of the challenges faced by our world due to racism, intolerance and discrimination. One, more than 1.2 billion youth, and this number can be even higher if we relax or be flexible on the age limits. These youth are aspiring for opportunities in a fast digitalizing world. And second, there is need for education and grooming opportunities for such a large youth population in an environment free of racism, intolerance and xenophobia. In a world literally becoming a global village as a result of advancements in digitization, including AI and related tools. The AI will be exclusively subject of the discussion of the discussion this afternoon. And in this morning session, we are going to discuss digital spaces as a whole, which is a very important subject. The digital age has revolutionized modes and methods of learning, socializing and construction of identities. The virtual frontier at the same time has remained unmoderated, providing space to actors for propagating racism, hate speech and discrimination in many forms. Digital racism manifesting in slurs, stereotypical means, targeted cyber bullying and algorithmic bias or other such things seriously threatens mental, emotional and social well-being and behavior of youth. Addressing racism in digital spaces, therefore, requires a proactive, multifaceted approach along with appropriate regulatory frameworks that emphasize advanced digital education to empower, protect and safeguard the next generation. The evolving experience suggests that digital spaces are not neutral. They reflect and amplify existing societal prejudices and discriminatory behavior. Research indicates that young people, particularly the marginalized sections, including such as from blacks, Asians and other minor minoritized ethnic communities, often experience online racial discrimination on a near daily basis. The exposure is not merely a social inconvenience. It is a profound threat. Studies link online racial discrimination to increase depressive symptoms, anxiety, such as the post-traumatic stress disorder in adolescents. Furthermore, the persistent and often anonymous nature of online hate combined with algorithmic amplification of harmful content means young users may encounter racist material unexpectedly leading to a sense of vulnerability, isolation and discrimination. When left unchecked, these experiences can be internalized, lowering self-esteem and disrupting education or other such harsh manifestations. To safeguard youth, education must move beyond traditional means to adapt to the sensitivities of the digital age. It is important to effectively develop critical digital literacy curricula to accomplish that education must train students to critically analyze online content and understand the structural factors that promote online racism. This includes educating youth on how to recognize hate speech, understand the impact of stereotypes and identify how algorithms can perpetuate bias. B, education should provide the historical context of racism and the application of relevant human rights instruments, particularly or such as the DDPA, helping young people place messages in context so that they can critique, cope with these effectively and tailor their responses to what they encounter. C, pedagogical approaches should empower students to become active upstanders, supporting victims and challenging hateful narratives rather than remaining silent bystanders. And D, education should foster digital resilience, a force field enabling youth to navigate challenging content without absorbing its harmful impacts. D, education should foster digital resources or dealing with those harmful impacts. Most importantly, protecting youth necessitates collaboration between educational institutions, families and technology platforms. опять- configure concerted MATTIAS-ệu-ガhaelodها, können escape kadınlaral favourite subtitleinate deaf environment. Sinceumuzuomo buyer isolates and technology latest field in digital world we areCabor Igz Digital Image Digital. Much pleasantly relevent That education institutions must explicitly recognize, titles of french public access Seiiti-Empe тысяч0 Serbれ. actually captured digital and non- remind human rights. Rames Perison from human rights is how used to strengthen the Sev�� private hil ranging and we do with the regulation's product organization ENTI We are putting our diversity on stage eyes to rate and that<|tr|> our revitalization. As this inclusion vision on stage now of residence among students, our Saskatch, CNsei könnte in digital文化 for example show butушка Otú'al on stage 5 else. This includes updating anti-bullying policies to include specific procedures for addressing online hate and providing teachers with the tools to tackle these issues. Two, parental engagement is of crucial importance with a view to be informed about how to facilitate open conversation about digital experiences, encouraging youth to share both positive and negative experiences without judgment and help them deal with the challenges. And number three, tech companies and all those institutions or all those organizations that are involved in this business must play a role by designing safer platforms, creating robust moderation systems and giving users more control over their experience such as reporting mechanisms that are efficient and easy to use. Ironically, despite calls for education, transparency and regulatory frameworks for the online activities, we have seen that the dark web continues to be used for criminal activities such as drugs and organized crime as well as propagating hate speech, violence and terrorism. The operation of the dark web, therefore, indicates a serious gap that exists in managing the digital platforms. In conclusion of my remarks, addressing racism in digital spaces is a defining challenge of our time. It requires commitment to transforming digital platforms into safe or safer spaces for all youth. By advancing education that fosters critical thinking, empathy and resilience, we can empower young people to confront racism, protect their mental health and take charge of their digital lives, ultimately safeguarding their well-being and shaping a more equitable future. I have been personally coming across all these phenomena because I am associated with the university which has almost 5,000 to 6,000 students and I am happy that our panelists today will elaborate various dimensions of these issues in this session which will be of great help for evolving forward strategies in this. Distinguished participants and delegates, I have now the pleasure to introduce our first speaker. Ms. Tania Akon, I hope I am pronouncing the name rightly. She is a senior program advisor for digital inclusion at UNICEF where she focuses on global programs such as GIGA, the joint ITU-slash-UNICEF initiative to connect every school to the Internet and empower children with information, opportunity and choice, supporting governments in more than 72 countries to expand equitable access to connectivity and digital infrastructure. With over 15 years across the United Nations, her work focuses on translating innovation into sustained equitable impact by bridging technology, policy and partnerships to strengthen education systems and advance safe, inclusive digital environments. Tania is South African bringing both professional and lived perspectives to global efforts to address inequality, racism and discrimination including in digital spaces. Ms. Akon, you have the floor. Thank you. Distinguished Chair, Excellencies, esteemed members of this group of independent eminent experts on the implementation of the DDPA, colleagues and members of the public. Thank you for this opportunity to join and contribute to this important discussion. Let me invite your attention first to this video to set the scene on a significant starting point of structural inequity in the digital domain. Access to the digital domain itself. Audio description Speaker 2 00 Summer 26 28ボシA Excellency I don't know if it has internet. I found... Oh no! Mommy, Mommy, look! A bunch of green ones! Great job! You found the best one! That's so cool! If they're green, it means they're connected, right? That's exactly right! Now that you've figured out what it means, I want to show you something. Wow! See, all these dots show us the connectivity status of schools across the globe. That's beautiful! Every child deserves digital access, opening doors to information, opportunity and choice. Visit match.deka.global today to experience a global view of connectivity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So as we can see, not only in education but in every sphere, connectivity has become integral to the lives and futures of children. For many children, affordable, sustainable, safe and resilient internet access now shapes whether they can participate fully in education, access, health services and benefit from support systems. If we could have the slides, please. Thank you. If we could have the slides, please. Thank you. An estimated two thirds of the world's school aged children, that's the 1.3 billion the chair was mentioning earlier, of children do not have access to internet at home. And most of these, as you might have spotted in that map, which is just of school connectivity, are across Asia and Africa. Those very dark areas without any dots, essentially. Socioeconomic factors are the greatest predictor of access, particularly in low income households. And when connectivity is absent or unreliable, opportunities that are increasing in the world's access to access to access access to access access. Particularly in low income households, particularly in low income households. And when connectivity is absent or unreliable, opportunities that are increasingly standard elsewhere become conditional or out of reach. And especially for children living in poverty, in remote communities, in humanitarian contexts, or in settings where racism and other forms of discrimination shapes both their online and offline realities. UNICEF's work on child centered digital equality underscores that digital exclusion is not a neutral gap that will just simply close itself over time. It in fact reflects and amplifies existing social, cultural, and economic inequalities in children's lives. When children are cut off from connectivity, they are cut off from innovation, from information, from opportunities to learn, and pathways to employment. From support and from participation. Fundamentally, from realizing many of their rights in a digital domain. Digital exclusion severs children from choices that their more connected peers take for granted. And it reinforces the very patterns of inequality that this forum is mandated to address. Evidence from policy reviews show that disadvantaged and vulnerable children, including goals, those living in rural areas, children with disabilities, and those from marginalized ethnic and racial groups, remain less likely to benefit from digital opportunities, and are more often exposed to risk. Really, a double divide. A children's ability to learn, to access services, to be safe online, should not be shaped by their postcode, their language, or their disability. UNICEF's digital equality work highlights that unequal contexts still produce unequal outcomes. UNICEF's digital equality highlights that are not only the most vulnerable outcomes. Unless we purposefully underlie, address the underlying injustices and other forms of exclusion that are explicitly recognized. And that we work to address these in both the online and offline environments. This discrimination is not only about who experiences harm online. It is also about who is visible, who is counted, and whose needs and realities are assumed in the way that digital systems are designed, deployed, financed, and governed. GIGA, as you saw in the video, the joint ITU-UNICEF initiative to connect every school to the internet, offers a practical example of how digital inequity can be made visible and can be turned into a basis for action. At the request of governments, GIGA is working with 73 countries. As was illustrated in the opening video, one of the first steps is to simply map schools and their connectivity status, drawing on government data, satellite imagery, and wherever possible, real-time monitoring. The result is a map that shows every school is a dot. Green, where the connectivity is adequate. Red, where it is absent. And other colors, where data is partial or connectivity is fragile. And today that map covers more than 2.2 million schools worldwide. Once schools are mapped and their connectivity status is visible, digital inclusion, digital exclusion becomes a pattern that can be seen, interrogated, and acted upon. Governments can ask questions. Questions like, why are some schools left behind even when coverage is within reach? Why does the quality of connectivity differ between otherwise comparable communities? And what would it take to close those gaps? It becomes possible to identify where existing infrastructure is underused and to design financing, deployment, and procurement approaches that target underserved areas more directly. But connectivity is just the starting point. To deliver benefits for children, it must be paired with other policies and practices. A school that is connected but lacks trained teachers, accessible learning platforms, relevant content in local languages, or safeguards that protect children's data and their safety is a school that is not fully realizing the promise of digital transformation. UNICEF's digital education strategy focuses on making connectivity count for children's learning. It puts teachers at the center and gives them digital tools that strengthen reading, math, and children's own languages. It helps them build wider skills like digital and AI literacy and critical thinking. It makes sure that the whole system, the plans, the platform, the data, and the financing is aligned so that work is scaled. And all of this is grounded in clear standards, evidence, and safeguards. So decisions are driven by what actually improves learning and inclusion. The benefits of connectivity extend well beyond the classroom. Governments have requested UNICEF to leverage its digital experience and multi-sector coverage and country presence to map and connect child-facing services more broadly to strengthen whole-of-government systems and realize children's rights. In health, connectivity can enable birth registration, digital health records, better quality of care, and access to telehealth. In child protection, extremely important in the digital domain, it can support helplines, reporting mechanisms, case management systems to better prevent and respond to violence, exploitation, and abuse. In social protection, it can improve the delivery of cash transfers and other support through more efficient and transparent registration. And in emergencies, connectivity and digital platforms that are inclusive contribute to resilience, early warning, life-saving information, and feedback loops that strengthen trust and accountability between communities and institutions. This expansion is a vital opportunity to keep every child in mind as the digital networks, public goods, and infrastructure are rolled out. But as we know, woven across every digital domain at a critically accelerating rate is artificial intelligence. The question is no longer whether children will encounter AI. The question is whether AI will be designed with children in mind or whether children will be left to adapt to a system that was only designed for adults and not even all of them. The question is whether AI will emphasize that children are not only users of AI-enabled systems, but also data subjects. And they are also decision-takers whose decisions and trajectories can be affected for life when automated algorithms amplify bias, exclusion, or profile them in opaque ways. So child-centric AI is not just child-safe AI. It begins with designing systems that actively support children's rights, development, dignity, and well-being by default. And UNICEF continually updates its guidance on AI in children with policy makers, public officials, and business leaders in mind. But if we are all serious about addressing racism and discrimination in the digital spaces, we must consider the ways in which digital divides and digital design decisions can reproduce existing inequities. The systematic underrepresentation, misrepresentation, or exclusion of certain children in the data, in the design of systems, and in the governance of digital technology matters. If the children whose lives are most constrained by discrimination are also those who are least likely to be visible in data, least likely to be consulted in design, or to have their context reflected in digital systems, then digital transformation actually risks deepening the divides it seeks to address. UNICEF's global view of digital inclusion policies, and its review of numerous of those, shows that they pay insufficient attention to the root causes of digital inequities, and also to the outcomes that children actually experience. When only some children can access devices that support learning, or when content is not accessible to children with disabilities, or when safety features are designed with only certain contexts in mind, then the result is a digital environment that is unequal by design. And evidence shows us that gender, disability, living in rural areas, language, poverty level, and minority status often shape digital access and the outcomes when those children engage in the digital domain. Allow me to share a few concrete examples from UNICEF's work with partners across the digital domain that demonstrate that tangible change is achievable, at the global level, at the level of industries and sectors, and with children themselves. At the global level, UNICEF contributes to setting expectations for a more child-centered digital future, so that digital systems, laws, and investments are assessed against their impact on children's safety, inclusion, participation, privacy, and access. For example, policy guidance on artificial intelligence in children provides practical guidance for governments, regulators, and companies on child-centric AI, including on policies and systems that actively support children's development and wellbeing, that prioritizes fairness, and, key to this body, non-discrimination, that protects children's data and privacy, and involves children meaningfully in AI design and governance. Our guidance on legislating for the digital age provides countries with support to strengthen their legal frameworks to protect children. And the child-centered digital equality framework provides policymakers in particular an ability to look at the equity outcomes of their digital investments. Across our analysis and in numerous case studies, children consistently report that the dominance of a few languages online constrains both their access to information and their ability to express themselves. This has a huge impact across child-centered learning platforms, education content, community tools, and AI-enabled services. And we are working with partners to expand the presence of underrepresented and historically excluded languages in digital public goods. These initiatives span both widely spoken languages that remain underserved, such as Bengali, with an estimated 280 million speakers. And Swahili, with an estimated 180 million speakers. As well as indigenous languages that are often completely absent from the digital domain, with fewer than 100,000 speakers. Including Raramuri in northern Mexico, Ishitel in the Guatemalan highlands, and Condozzi in the Peruvian Amazon. This is a stark illustration of the digital divide. Considering that language, spoken by more than 150 million speakers, is yet underrepresented in the digital space. Next, at the level of industries and markets, UNICEF is working to shift how entire industry sectors think about children. Through market shaping approaches, such as the Africa-wide bulk procurement initiative, which seeks to aggregate demand and engage the global telecommunications industry to drive more transparent, competitive markets and expand affordable connectivity at scale to underserved child-serving facilities, including schools. Through early stage investment mechanisms, such as the UNICEF venture fund, which helps to shape the wider technology ecosystem by investing in open, inclusive innovations in emerging economies. And through initiatives such as the Game Changers Coalition, through which UNICEF and partners engage the gaming industry to influence how girls and young women are represented, included, and indeed protected in gaming spaces. And to support their participation, not only as players, but also as creators and leaders. Children as co-designers, not just consumers, are another part of the ecosystem where UNICEF is driving change. Digital access, when achieved, should not just leave children as passive consumers of content. It should enable them to be informed, supported, and heard, and where appropriate, to shape the tools and the spaces that they use and shape those as creators and builders. One example is Oki, a digital menstrual health tool that was co-created with adolescent girls in low and middle income countries. Here you see the young women in Papua New Guinea who helped to design the implementation in that country. These girls were involved from the outset in defining what the tools should do, in testing early versions relevant for their country and community contexts, and designing which features, and importantly, which safeguards and user journeys work in their lives, including on shared and low-end devices, and taking into account low literacy or low digital literacy. Oki today runs in 12 countries, and in each of those, girls and their communities help to localize that content, the language, the design, and the user experience, so that it remains relevant and trusted. This application illustrates what it means to design with marginal users, rather than simply delivering technology to them, and to do that at some scale. Inclusive learning for children with disabilities provides another important example, and that is a group of children with disabilities often described being effectively excluded completely when platforms, devices, and learning materials are not accessible or available in the formats that they can use. UNICEF's work on AI-enabled accessible digital textbooks is learning to show how children can be supported to learn through multiple formats, so that they can follow the same curriculum content as their peers, rather than being offered separate materials, or sometimes no materials at all. And these inclusive features can range from text to speech and image descriptions, to sign language videos, and for those who are non-verbal learners, alternative means of communicating and participating. So allow me to close with a forward-looking reflection. There is now broad agreement that digital technologies will continue to shape children's lives in profound ways, both for better and for worse. The question is not whether children will be part of the digital future, but on what terms. So we call on multilateral stakeholders, policy makers, public officials, and business leaders, to take clear and concrete steps today to unlock positive digital outcomes and avoid reinforcing inequality, exclusion, racism, and other forms of discrimination in the digital space. We also ask for this group to strongly encourage some of the following actions in its findings and conclusions, and to lend its considerable weight to bending the arc of digital progress in favor of children and their rights online. UNICEF sees these three areas where sustained attention is needed. Investment, coordination, and child-centered design and governance. Firstly, in investment, connectivity is not just an issue of access. It's a necessary accelerator for the realization of children's rights in today's digital context. Inequality is not only reproduced in platforms and content, but also in how infrastructure is planned, financed, deployed, and prioritized. Connectivity is indeed a catalytic strategic enabler across health, education, protection, social systems. And children need investment in affordable, sustainable, safe, and resilient connectivity, and the digital public infrastructure and digital public goods that enable systems to be strengthened to provide equitable services. So governments, international financial institutions, development financial institutions, and the private sector hold the power to do this. Second, in terms of coordination, fragmented siloed approaches limit impact. Coordination action is needed that addresses offline inequalities and discrimination alongside the ones on the digital domain. Across governments, UN entities, regulators, industry, civil societies, and communities themselves, digital strategies must be coherent, evidence-informed, and aligned. What is not measured remains invisible. That has been a huge learning for us. So we recommend that governments and partners strengthen data availability, mapping, and real-time monitoring to better coordinate everything from policy and planning to more efficient and equitable and cost-effective decision-making and accountability. And third and finally, child-centered design and governance. Digital policies, platforms, and products should be developed with children's needs and experiences clearly in view. Ensuring privacy and safety. Preventing discriminatory impacts and harmful profiling. Making systems accessible and relevant to diverse groups of children. And embedding mechanisms for feedback and redress. Children must be meaningfully involved in shaping these systems in line with their evolving capacities, so that digital environments reflect their realities and aspirations. Governments, regulators, and companies each have an important role to play. And UNICEF encourages these actors to draw on the tools that we and others have developed to support this work. Including, as mentioned, guidance on AI in children. Legislating for the digital age. A child-centered digital equality framework. And various strategies. And we invite you to use these resources as practical starting points to assess current policies and design more inclusive, less discriminatory, child-centered digital systems. If we work in this way, investment, coordination, and child-centered design, governance, these become tools for dismantling structural exclusion rather than entrenching it. And the digital future will be shaped with children and not simply around them. So UNICEF stands ready to continue to work with member states, this expert mechanism, and with partners to continue to build digital environments in which every child will survive, thrive, and fulfill their potential. Thank you. Thank you, Tania, for your presentation. You have brought important subjects, important areas into the debate. You have brought important subjects, digital connectivity, digital exclusion, digital divide. And you have very rightly emphasized on investment, coordination, and child-centered interventions for dismantling structural exclusion. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Ms. Fanny Rotino, who leads global work on child online protection and digital safety at the International Telecommunication Union, ITU. Driving flagship initiatives that support member states in strengthening policy, capacity, and responses to online risks affecting children and young people, including violence, discrimination, and racism in digital spaces. She recently co-led the development of the Joint Statement on AI and Child Rights with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, CRC, and partners across the UN system, shaping global guidance on embedding children's rights in AI. She also leads ITU's Go Safer initiative implemented with the World Health Organization, advancing prevention and education at scale. Her work promotes inclusive rights-based digital environments and meaningful child and youth participation at the intersection of technology, human rights, and child protection. Ms. Rotino, you have the floor. Thank you very much, distinguished chair, excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you very much for the invitation. It is a real privilege to contribute to this important discussion today on addressing racism in digital spaces and advancing education to safeguard children and youth. While ITU's work as a UN specialized agency for information and telecommunication technologies is far broader, I will approach this issue today from, indeed, a child rights perspective, representing ITU's Child Online Protection Initiative, that has been working on the topic of online violence against children since 2009, and the work of the Union on Online Safety for All, but also from a broader digital inclusion and governance perspective. We believe that discrimination, violence online, including racism in digital spaces are not isolated online behaviors. They are indeed part of a wider system of inequalities, as we have also heard, increasingly amplified by platforms, algorithms, weak reporting systems and response systems, and persistent digital devices. If we can put the slides on, that would be great. Thank you very much. So, indeed, a human rights and, more specifically, child rights-based response and prevention must, therefore, align, indeed, preventive measures, reporting, education, participation, and accountability. Before speaking about those online harms, I believe it is, indeed, important to step back and reflect on the broader question of digital inclusion, and not only with a focus on children, but on global inequalities, indeed. Inclusion is not simply about connectivity. This is an important part, a key part, but this is why in ITU's work we move beyond the simple connecting of people, including children and young people. We work to meaningfully connect people. How do we understand that? This includes capacity building, it includes digital literacy, and it also includes online safety education, and includes digital inclusion in a broader sense, which is also about whether children and young people communities can access those digital technologies safely, equally, and in ways that support their rights and development. The world is, indeed, increasingly connected, but the divides remain significant. According to ITU's facts and figures in 2025, we had 74% of the world's population now being connected. But this still means that 2.2 billion people remain offline, most of them, indeed, in low- and middle-income countries. The divide is also deeply unequal by income. In high-income countries, Internet use is close to universal at 94%. In low-income countries, only 23% of the population is online. Rural and remote communities also remain significantly disadvantaged. Globally, 85% of people in urban areas use the Internet, compared with 58% in rural areas. And in low-income countries, only 14% of rural residents are online. So the data tells us something very important. Digital exclusion is not random. It follows existing lines of inequality, income, geography, gender, disability, displacement, language, and social exclusion. And even when children and young people are connected, that does not mean they are meaningfully connected. They may lack affordable access, accessible content, digital literacy, safety skills, privacy protections, or support system when something does indeed go wrong. These inequalities disproportionately affect children and young people living in poverty, indigenous communities, persons with disabilities, displaced children and youth, and other marginalized groups. At the same time, digital systems are still too rarely, or almost never, designed with these communities in mind. Children, youth, minorities, and vulnerable populations are often not meaningfully considered in the design, development, deployment, and governance of technologies. This matters deeply because indeed digital technologies increasingly shape access to education, participation, information, health, protection, civic engagement, and opportunity in a broader sense. Technology can and should be a powerful enabler of rights. But if access is unequal, inaccessible, unsafe, biased, discriminatory, or exploitative, then this is not only a technical gap or a policy gap, it is indeed a human rights issue. In many contexts, a failure to ensure equitable and meaningful connectivity is already a failure to uphold children's rights and also a security issue. That is why connectivity alone is indeed not enough. Every digital inclusion effort that IT leads must also build digital literacy, resilience, safety skills, critical thinking, accessibility, and safe systems by design. This becomes even more urgent when we look specifically at children and young people. So young people, these among between the ages of 15 and 24, so there is an overlap here, among children and young adults, are among the most connected groups globally. Around 82% of this demographic group is online. In many contexts, especially in those low-income countries referenced before, youth are far more likely to be online than other demographic groups. This means that digital spaces are already central to how children and young people learn, communicate, socialize, participate, and also seek support. Yet access remains unequal. Globally, only around one-third of children and young people have internet access at home, in a safe space, with major gaps between high and low-income settings. So again, many children connect for the first time through mobile devices without the relevant safeguards in place and without the relevant skills and resilience established. So we already see a double reality exposure without protection and access without safeguards. At the same time, violence against children remains widespread. Around one billion children experience physical, sexual, or emotional violence or neglect each year. And digital spaces increasingly intersect with these offline harms. As a matter of fact, one in eight children in the world has proven to have been affected by online exploitation and abuse. The key point is that online and offline vulnerabilities reinforce each other. The children most at risk, as we have heard, offline are also those that are most at risk online, including children facing racial discrimination, poverty, displacement, disability, migration, or other forms of exclusion. So digital inclusion can not only be measured by whether a child is connected. We also have to ask, connected to what services, to what platforms, under what conditions, with what safeguards, and with what ability to seek support if something goes wrong, either online or offline. Children and young people face significant online harms. More than 70% of young people online worldwide report, and these are the numbers of which we are aware, having faced harassment and bullying online. And one in three children say that they have, one in five apologies, say that they have actually skipped school because of this. The point here to make is that the impact of online violence on the offline lives of children or the offline environment is very tangible and very real. So it's not two different spheres that we have to treat separately from each other. It's one environment, it's one life, it's one reality for children that is interconnected. So this shows how those online harms do affect children's rights beyond the digital space, including their right to education, mental health, participation, and also their protection from violence. We also know that online harms, including online bullying and abuse, are strongly linked to anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal behaviours, with a worrying increase in suicidal ideation. UNICEF's recent evidence actually found that those children that have experienced online abuse and bullying show significant higher rates of suicidal thoughts. And these harms are becoming more scalable, realistic, and harder to detect because of AI and other emerging technologies. For children, online harm is not abstract. It is immediate, personal, and often continuous. It is not confined to a screen. It can follow children at home, it does, into school, into their friendships, into their mental health, into their sleep, 24 hours a day. And more severely, everything we know, unfortunately, that was online once, is very difficult to be taken down, ever. So we have a huge issue of re-victimization of online violence content. So, racism online is not just about harmful content, though. It directly affects children's rights, as mentioned, to the right to non-discrimination, the right to protection from violence, the right to education, to participation, to mental health and development. And digital technologies change the nature of harm. Racist bullying, cyber harassment, and discriminatory narratives can become continuous, as mentioned, visible, searchable, shareable, and persistent. And increasingly, they are algorithmically amplified. Digital technologies do not create racism from nothing. But they can, and they do, accelerate it. They scale it. They personalize it. Commercialize it. Normalize discriminatory narratives. And make it much harder for children and young people to escape. It creates circles of re-victimization, where harm continues long after the first incidents. So racism and online violence in digital spaces should not be treated only as a content moderation issue. It is a child rights issue, a protection issue, a mental health issue, an educational issue, and a systematic issue. So we often structure risks, online risks, into five categories to better understand the dimensions. We call them the five C's because all of them start with a C. So there are content risks, such as hate speech, racist narratives, stereotypes, extremist worldviews, harmful AI-generated material, or unhealthy body norms, as example. You have then the contact risks, that include harassment, targeting, recruitment into harmful communities, or grooming. You have the conduct risks, where a child is involved, such as cyberbullying, peer-to-peer violence, or exclusion, and the sharing of harmful content by peers. And then you have the commercial and contract risks, including profiling, data misuse, exploitative design, manipulative advertising, and the use of children's data. And there are the fifth, the cross-cutting risks that include discrimination, exclusion, mental health impacts, and weak access to reporting, referral, and remedy for children and young people. But the key point is that these risks do not exist in isolation. They are deeply interconnected with offline violence, discrimination, and inequality. And this is particularly important for this discussion because racism and discrimination do not only appear as one category of harmful content. They cut across content, contact, conduct, design, data, algorithms, reporting systems, and access to remedy. Cyber violence in particular, and harmful content, are those categories where racism becomes very concrete for children and young people. Online harassment can be repetitive, anonymous, widely visible, and persistent. It can spread much faster than offline harassment and reach a much larger audience. Harmful content can indeed include racism, hate speech, incitement to violence, self-harm content, and all other forms of harmful or degrading material. And because online spaces are always available, the harm can feel inescapable. A child may indeed leave school, go home, and still remain exposed to the same abuse through their device. This is why we need to understand online harm not only as an individual piece of content, but also as an environment and as a system. Who sees what? What is recommended by technology? What is amplified? What is removed? What is easily removed? What takes longer? What is ignored? Which languages are indeed moderated? Which communities are protected? These are not only technical questions. These are child rights and human rights questions. Online and offline harms are indeed increasingly interconnected. One of the biggest gaps today that we see in the response is fragmentation. We often treat education, platform regulation, digital governance, including digital inclusion, cyber security, and child protection systems as separate. But children experience them as one system, as one continuum. A child may experience racist abuse online, not know how to report it, not trust the platform, not have access to support, and receive no meaningful response. A reporting button on a frequently used platform by children without a response pathway is no protection. We need stronger alignment across prevention, reporting, response, and recovery. Prevention means digital literacy. It means online safety education. It means rights education, anti-racism education, safety by design, age-appropriate design, and security by design, as well as algorithmic accountability. Reporting must be child friendly. Reporting must be child friendly. It must be accessible, transparent, multilingual, confidential, and trusted. Response must connect children to real support. Not only chatbots, but actual mental health professionals need to be behind the pathways of protection. Helplines, schools, social services, mental health support, and where appropriate, law enforcement. And recovery matters too. Children need support after harm, not only content removal, which we know is difficult to obtain. This is also where we need to connect online safety more directly with existing child protection systems, violence prevention strategies, educational systems, and mental health support. Together with the Office of the Special Representative on Violence Against Children, UNICEF, UNESCO, and other UN agencies, NGOs, and private sector companies, we have therefore developed what we call the POP principles, protection through online participation. And they are key in this effort. They recognize that digital platforms are not only spaces of risk, but they can also become gateways to protection and support. Children and young people increasingly turn to digital spaces for support when they have experienced violence, either online or offline. As a matter of fact, 76% of nearly 600 children and young people from 87 countries that we consulted, confirmed that they turn to online platforms for support, either always or most of the time. They often trust peer networks, online functioning peer networks more than official systems. And they have immense trust in youth-led initiatives because they are accessible, they are familiar, and they are indeed peer-informed. This is a critical shift. Protection should not mean silencing children or excluding them from digital spaces. It should mean giving them safer pathways to participate, seek help, and shape the systems they use, including through the exact platforms that put them at risk. Children are not only victims or passive users, of course. They are rights holders, they are stakeholders, and they are the experts in their own digital lives. In many cases, they are not only asking to be consulted. They are actually leading the solutions. You have children that have created those online support systems for their peers, fake websites that actually are mental health support systems, channels, groups on the most recent or most used platforms that are trusted by white communities of children and young people, either local or even global scale. So the question is not whether children should participate. The question is whether we are creating conditions for their participation online in the safe, meaningful, and supported way. So those digital systems, as we have seen, are not neutral. We need to recognize that as a technical agency we do. Most technologies are not designed with those vulnerable groups at minds, with children at mind, and even less marginalized children in mind. They reproduce and amplify discrimination through biased training data, unequal moderation, this language exclusion, profiling, recommender systems. Racist abuse in minority languages or coded language, for example, is often less detected and less addressed. Children can also be affected by systems they never meaningful consented to, education platforms, biometric tools, AI systems or predictive systems. And cyber security strategies, national cyber security strategies, still too often focus on infrastructure, threats, crime and resilience without enough attention to human impact, child rights impact, child critical digital services or child centered design. A cyber security strategy that protects networks but does not protect the humans they use or at their service it stands is incomplete. If digital governance is not inclusive and human centered, it risks protecting systems while leaving children exposed. With AI, many of these risks are accelerating and becoming more complex. AI systems increasingly shape what children see, how they are profiled, what content is amplified, how risks are detected and how children access information, education and support. Yet, most AI systems are still not designed with children in mind. And this is why ITU, together with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF, OHCHR and other international organizations, launched the joint statement on AI and the rights of the child. Its message is clear. AI governance cannot be child neutral and it cannot be neutral on discrimination. It must be rights-based, inclusive and actively anti-discriminatory. This means moving beyond general ethical principles towards concrete governance and accountability measures. First, child rights impact assessments should become standard practice before AI systems affecting children are actually deployed, including recommender systems, content moderation systems, educational technologies, predictive systems and generative AI tools. These assessments should evaluate risk of discrimination, exclusion, racial and linguistic bias, mental health impacts and a broader risk to children's rights. And they should not remain internal corporate exercises only. They should be transparent, independently reviewable and accessible in child-friendly ways. Second, we need stronger action on algorithmic bias. That means bias testing, representative data sets, ongoing auditing and independent oversight across race, language, geography, gender and disability. Third, we need to move beyond content moderation alone and address systematic amplification. Recommender systems and engagement-driven design can actively amplify hate speech, discriminatory narratives and harmful stereotypes. The question is no longer what content should be removed or moderated. It is also what kinds of behaviours and amplifications should systems be allowed to optimise, especially when children and young people are involved. Fourth, we need specific safeguards by design. Age-appropriate protections, stronger privacy safeguards, restrictions on exploitative data use and protections against manipulative and harmful targeting. Children need accessible reporting pathways, meaningful human review and access to support when harm occurs. Human oversight remains essential here, especially in situations involving discrimination, violence and mental health risks. And finally, children and young people themselves must be meaningful involved in AI governance, design, testing and evaluation, alongside stronger investment in AI literacy and critical thinking. At ITU, from experience in around 30 countries where we assisted member states in developing holistic programmes, strategies, frameworks and campaigns on online safety for children and young people, what works is not isolated interventions or awareness campaigns or education. What works are coordinated, rights-based system approaches that connect policy, regulation, education, protection systems, technology design and meaningful participation. Countries need comprehensive national child honour protection frameworks that are multi-sectoral, adequately funded, centralised, coordinated and linked to broader child protection systems and grounded in child rights principles. These frameworks should include prevention, reporting, response and recovery and access to remedies and support services. They must recognise that online harms do not exist separately from offline realities such as violence, exclusion and inequality. Legal and regulatory frameworks need to evolve more rapidly to ensure that what is illegal offline is also illegal online and that protections against discrimination and exploitation are enforceable online as well. At the platform level voluntary commitments alone are not enough. Platforms and technology providers should undertake child rights due diligence, risk assessments, transparency reporting and stronger accountability measures. Safety by design and privacy by design should become baseline expectations, not optional features. Reporting mechanisms must be simple, trusted, multilingual, accessible to children with disabilities and connected to real support systems. And prevention efforts must also move beyond fear-based messaging. Children and young people need digital literacy, AI literacy, anti-racism education, critical thinking, resilience and the ability to safely navigate and shape digital environments. Inclusion must go beyond access alone. Inclusion must include accessibility, culturally and linguistically relevant content, equitable participation and technologies designed with diverse users in mind from the outset. And finally children and young people must be systematically included in policy development, platform engagement, safety by design evaluation, not symbolically but meaningfully. The challenge today is not the absence of principles, it's implementation. At ITU this is where we work or we focus not only on guidance and principle but also on implementation and support. ITU supports countries and partners to translate child rights into digital policy tools and practices. We have worked on developing guidance, on developing frameworks together with countries from the ground in full ownership of the relevant authorities in coordination of all the relevant authorities at the national level. We have worked with children globally to develop capacity building, online trainings and in-person trainings in local, national and also at the global level. Child friendly tools and resources. We have a game on online safety, we have an app on online safety and we have different trainings for the different audiences that you can see on the slides. We work with more than 80 partners currently supporting over 30 countries in the world and reached just in the past two years 170,000 children through capacity building and awareness efforts on online safety. But again the point is not only scale, the point is helping translate child rights into systems that work. So a few key recommendations before I close. First, racism in digital spaces must be recognized as a child rights and protection issue, not only as a content moderation issue. Second, we must move from regulating content to governance systems, embedding non-discrimination, child rights and safety by design into digital regulation, AI governance and cyber security strategies. Third, prevention, reporting, response and recovery must be aligned so children can access real support. Fourth, we must invest in digital literacy, education, AI literacy, critical thinking and help seeking skills. And fifth, children and young people, especially those from marginalized communities must be meaningfully included in policy and technology design. The digital environment can either reproduce discrimination at scale or become a space where children are protected, heard and empowered. That choice depends on the systems we design, the safeguards we require and whether we build them with children, not only for them. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Rotino, for your presentation. In your presentation you have highlighted and some of the highlights are that digital inclusion is a human right, is a child right. Digital divide cannot be seen in isolation, but it is actually along established fault lines in our societies as well as globally and regionally. Youth are highly connected today but unequally protected. Online risks are there. You have highlighted those online risks and then you have suggested how prevention should provide safer pathways in digital spaces including AI governance. And then you have concluded your presentation with excellent recommendations. With this, I move to our next speaker. Our next speaker is Ms. Louise Thivont Johansson, who is an international human rights lawyer with over 20 years of experience in advancing human rights across development and humanitarian settings. She is the founder and executive director of the Child and Youth Friendly Governance Project, CYFGP, the only organization globally dedicated exclusively to involving children and young people in decision making. Before founding CYFGP, Louise helped transform and expand UNICEF's Child Friendly Cities Initiative to more than 50 countries, impacting millions of children worldwide. Her career also includes human rights and policy work with the Danish and British governments, the Red Cross, Dignity, the Centre for Transitional Justice and UNOCCA. Throughout her career, Louise has championed inclusive approaches with a strong focus on marginalized and vulnerable children, young people and their families. Ms. Thivont, you have the floor. Thank you. So, thank you Ambassador Khan. Thank you everyone for having me here. I'm really delighted to be here, learning a lot from colleagues as well and I look forward to our discussions. And, yes, I'll go for it straight away and I'll try to keep it short and concise to leave plenty of room for discussions afterwards. A little bit about who we are as an organization. We are a fairly new organization. We were established a bit more than three years ago. And, yes, we are a child rights organization that's worked with both children and young people and being specialized in child and youth friendly governance, child participation and safeguarding. And, yes, we are co-founded and co-governed with children and young people, which is perhaps a bit unique about our organization. And so this means everything from our statutes to all the policies that we put in place to how we decide on our annual priorities is co-defined with children and young people. That also means that we are governed by two boards. We have a board of directors, all adults, and then we have an advisory board of children and young people. We work with both government, international organizations, academia and civil society to design and scale participatory models that place children and young people at the heart of decision making. What does this mean very concretely? So, very concretely, we work with and support and empower the institutions, our partners that we work with, to work with children in a manner that is both meaningful, safe and generates results for everyone. So, whenever we work with and support and support and support, we work with the children, the adults working with them, and as well as the institutions, not to forget how this will work, the positive impacts for the broader societies. Secondly, we focus a lot on work, a lot of our work focuses on children. So, we facilitate participatory processes with children and young people across different forms. This can be anything from global consultations, local consultations, organizing focus group discussions, and establishing either long-term or time-bound child and youth advisory boards. And, as part of this, we also train and train the children and young people. There's a big demand for it. Many of them, they don't know about their rights. They don't know about safeguarding. They don't. They tell us they've never received any information on how they can participate in any form. So, we also do a lot of learning workshops together with them, where we talk about the international standards for child and youth participation. And this is a very critical part of our work, because what this does and the direct impact it has on children and young people is that it helps them develop critical life skills. And an interesting fact is that when we look at the life skills that children and young people develop through this collaboration, what we see is that there's a complete overlap with the skills that World Economic Forum, a couple of years ago, identified as the most sought-after life skills at the labor market. And this is important, because this is one of the really big concerns of children and young people, and that's not developing these skills before they become adults and start looking for jobs. So, you already heard the word child and youth-friendly governance a couple of times, and I was happy to hear my colleagues use it a bit as well. Many organizations also talk about participation. So, allow me just to very briefly reflect on these two different concepts that are two sides of the same coin, really. So, child and youth participation refers to children and young people's rights to participate in decisions impacting their lives. In legally speaking and practically speaking, this means that they have a right to have a voice, they have a right to be heard. The moment a decision impacts their lives, but also there is an obligation upon states to give that voice due consideration. And this is the second part that we are very occupied with in our organization. What does that look like in a digital environment? I won't go into depth. The colleagues have already talked about that, but it's obviously multiple online opportunities for children and young people to participate in decision-making through online consultations, advisory board, participatory research, etc. So, child and youth-friendly governance, when we work a lot with that term, that's because it refers to systems and processes that give children and young people a meaningful, safe and effective voice in decision-making. So, what we are looking at here is, another word is institutionalization. We did a mapping of where we tried to look at what child and youth- what- why did we not advance further with the child and youth participation work that has been invested in over the past two decades. And one of the reasons is, we discovered, was there's been a massive investment in capacity building. Don't get me wrong, this is really important. We have to continue doing this, not just of children and young people, but also of the adults working with them. But, this alone is not a sustainable investment. So, we need to invest in institutionalization of this commitment of different decision-makers. And there are many. Here we talk about policy-makers within the multilateral system, governments at all levels, regional bodies, like the EU Commission to mention one. It's within the school system, it's within the health system. Any person who makes personal institution making a decision on behalf of children and young people, it would be considered a decision-maker. So, what does this look like in the digital space again? So, there's two sides to it here. And one is obviously about, while there are these- that we create- that institutions create these digital opportunities and platforms, but also take into consideration the viability, the sustainability, and the longer-term engagement with children and young people. I don't necessarily say the same group of children and young people. Another aspect, as we also heard colleagues speak to, is obviously children and young people's direct engagement and voice in the design, use, and regulations of digital technologies, including AI, which are affecting their lives. And here, in this organization, I will not be focusing a lot on the work that we do, but rather have this a little bit of a- I thought this presentation a bit more as an outset for a discussion. But some of the things we have been involved in as an organization is obviously, as already mentioned, the joint statement on AI and the rights of the child. And we're currently preparing for consultations with children globally to inform the UN dialogue on AI governance. And it will be helping children in not only getting these consultations out, getting these surveys out there, but also working with children and young people on analyzing the results that we get from these consultations, and support them in developing recommendations for states and organizations involved in this dialogue. Another recent example was we were working in support of the European Commission, which had a safer internet, a safer strategy for a safer internet for kids. And while that was going on, they wanted to check in and see was it still fit for purpose. And as part of that, we led consultations with children across Europe to hear their inputs. And in all of this work, I just want to highlight what is really striking is when you look at your attend meetings, where all of these adults working with institutions struggle with what are we going to deal with? What are the solutions to all of these problems? And then at the same time, we sit there with the children, and they have all the solutions. And the wonder of it is they're cost efficient. They're not difficult to implement. And it's really quite modest what children, they are expecting. It's like we can tell you how you can help deal with the age verification issues. You know, we have ideas for how we can secure good support for children and young people. Because as colleagues mentioned, right now they don't have any way, they don't feel safe going to the parents, their teachers, like anyone. They go to their peers, but the peers, they don't know how to guide. They have many ideas about how children can better support them. They have many ideas about how we can better train themselves to support each other. So we're very excited to see this going forward and what will come out of it. So, the paradox of child and youth participation. So, we talked about it already. It is a right. Well, there's also a right for children and young people not to face discrimination. That's established. What is really wonderful to see is this past decade, we've seen a growing interest and practice of child and youth participation. We see a wealth of summits, consultations, digital platforms. The whole online engagement has opened a wealth of doors that, you know, we can barely keep abreast. We see international frameworks increasingly referencing child and youth participation, not as an option but as an obligation. We see governments, UN, international organizations and local governments and local organizations increasingly acknowledging participation as a priority. But, the reality is that real influence is rare and so is inclusion. So, we see more and more platforms. We see more and more opportunities for children and young people to share their voice. What we see less of is this link that should be made. So, if we look at the Convention on the Rights of the Child which introduced the concept of participation, then there are two elements to it. The right, you know, the platforms where children have the right to express their voice. And then also, the obligation to give that voice due consideration. That does not mean that we need to agree with everything put forward. But that second element is often forgotten. And that's again why we're very focused on the governance structures to make sure that we work more wholesomely with children and young people. And because it's very frustrating. They, in many situations, they engage in volunteers. They commit hours we can't even count for sometimes to influence these processes because we ask them. They're not paid for it in many. Some of them even report having expenses related to their participation, right? Which, of course, should not be the case. And most often they tell us we never know, we don't know what happens because there's no accountability. There's no feedback loop that is closed. And that's problematic. And what we worry about with these trends is that we end up risk having children and young people not being so willing to engage in these processes. And then important for this meeting, two of the by far biggest challenges I think we face today is that of representation and inclusion. So that is something we are very concerned with and very occupied by and something we as organizations need to keep on having a closer look at. Okay. On barriers, we already had colleagues speak to this in quite a detailed manner. So I won't go a lot into details with this. But barriers to participation is something that exists for all children and young people. But it exists more for some than others and no like and amongst those seldomly heard groups, we obviously see children and young people that have faced racism and discrimination. Access, we heard about lack of connectivity. Mistrust of authority is an important one. Also when there has been an opportunity to engage and that has been a very negative one because the children and young people don't feel they've been listened to. They don't feel they had any influence. Process, and this is a really important one. There is a profound lack of attempt from institutions and organizations to ensure that there is adequate outreach. And this is not, I'm not pointing any fingers here. We're struggling with it ourselves. I'll be honest about that. But quite often this is not done because we're afraid that, you know, we won't do it properly. And then it just doesn't happen. And quite often, you know, we don't know how to do it. But this is something that has to be addressed and it has to be addressed quickly. Then we talk a lot about safeguarding, safe environments. But here we would just, we always call for the broadest possible interpretation of safeguarding. Not a very stringent focus on violence, verbal violence. But creating environments where young people and children, they feel safe, they feel welcome. And prevention is a really important element. To do everything you can in the preparations for your work to make sure that you accommodate for seldomly heard groups who may have had less experience with participating. Because if not, it can be a very overwhelming experience. Language and culture, colleagues have talked to that. And then representation. Children and young people rarely see role models that they can relate to in these participatory processes. And I know coming here to Geneva, which can sometimes be a little bit of an overwhelming process. So that's something we can place greater emphasis on as well. But the problem that we, what I'm really trying to say here is that inequality and discrimination is currently reproduced in participation itself. And to a large extent by adults leading these processes. And then I just want to share this with you. Because this is what we hear children and young people say about inclusion and discrimination. We don't have one participatory process where this inclusion is not raised by the children and young people that are involved. So generally, this is just from one consultation that was done a while ago. But here, 70% call for more opportunities to be heard in decision making. This figure is typically a lot higher. 42% call for creation of safer environments where people can speak up, feel free to be who they are. 40% call on adults to engage more with children who have experienced discrimination. And 34% wanted to have more public discussion about inclusiveness. But it is always raised and it is raised within the first 15 minutes of any conversation. So children want this. The barrier, the real barrier is us adults working with the institutions facilitating these processes. So why is child and youth participation and friendly governance important? So the problem we have is that we do user testing on everything we develop pretty much. But when it comes to children and young people, this is less so a thing, even though it's been getting more attention in the past years. So the problem we have is that those policies, programs and services that we invest a lot of money in, they don't necessarily mirror the lived realities and therefore there's a very high risk of them being affected. Because they simply do not necessarily represent the needs of the children and young people. So it's quite basic really. Another big problem is we don't do or why we should do it is that it further erodes trust in institutions. And we know democracy has been in decline for 18 consecutive years. We also see multilateral organizations and processes being highly challenged by children and young people, who don't find them legitimate and don't trust them. This is really worrying. Recent research demonstrates that children believe less in human rights than our generations in this room do. They are probably more favorable or they are more favorable or more open to the idea of authoritarian regimes that we, our generations in this room would be. These are concerning trends. And then obviously the evident reason that children and youth are deprived of their rights and the opportunity to develop critical life skills that they will need later in life. It also means that we deprive them of the possibility developed at their agency if we don't give them the opportunity to exercise it before they turn 18 and vote. So what does this mean? This means that we're dealing with not just a procedural gap. This is a governance failure and it's a rights violation. So the solution, the interesting part here. What can be done about it? We can do a whole lot about it. And I think we're seeing a lot already being put in place. But we have the opinion right now, like it's not necessarily more consultations, but that we commit time and resources to make the consultations that we do better in line with international standards and that we make them inclusive. And then also ensure better coordination and collaboration around these processes. It is like we've seen it in humanitarian context for many years where we know like needs assessment. One of the biggest problems we have there that the same family would be consulted by seven different agencies and to give the same information without necessarily receiving the aid being delivered later on. So I think we see some similar tendencies developing in this context now. We recommend a combined methodology, not relying on digital platforms and tools only. And this is particularly critical when we want to reach seldomly heard marginalized groups that we don't see well presented in these processes. This means with working with children, obviously, that we need to pay attention to safeguarding. But there's help out there. We are there. But there are many other organizations, civil society organizations that are ready to lend a hand with that and support that. Collaboration. Incredibly important, as I said, to avoid duplication. But it is particularly, if I give a concrete example, if there is an initiative to launch an online consultation, most institutions are already having the discussion about this not being inclusive, not reaching certain groups out there. So one methodology that we make great use of is to work with grassroots organizations that work with these seldomly heard groups. Talk about reach. Talk about how they can support the focus group discussions. Talk about appropriate language, which is very critical when you work in local context as well. And then, obviously, we have to continue focusing on disaggregation of data collection to identify patterns. But here working online, we need also to be really careful that we are right now in the discussions around whether we can talk about disaggregation in terms of like whether children identify with seldomly heard groups online. Because some of these groups are considered criminalized in countries. And the lack of securities we still have online, you know, this is problematic. So I think here it's so important to continue having these dialogues with that and find solutions to do disaggregation but never putting children at risk, of course. Structured, long-term engagement, institutionalization, as I mentioned, rather than one-offs. And creating these clear links to decision-making. One of the nine requirements for meaningful, ethical, and effective child participation, which have been issued by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, asks, it's important that children, they understand what they are getting involved into. Why are they getting involved? And what will they influence? So that is something that's very important that we communicate this to them. And this is particularly important when children are involved in some kind of advocacy, like initiatives like that along the lines of advocacy, or sometimes attending meetings here in the UN where decision-making about certain topics can take years. It's very important to inform them upfront. And if all of that is communicated in a very clear and transparent manner, it's also a lot easier to do the feedback later with children and young people. And this is a very critical one, and one that needs to be invested a lot more in. When we ask children and young people to spend time, their volunteer time in addition to the schools and the busy social agendas many of them have, the least we can do is to revert to them, explain to them, how was their input used? Were any of their recommendations taken into consideration? And if they weren't, why not? This is very important to children. As the Committee on the Rights of the Child has also emphasized, and which we hear from children and young people themselves over and over again, working full circle is an extremely good practice when it involves children and young people. Here I have a slide on safeguarding. I will not go into that in great detail. It's just giving a few examples. We heard colleagues talk a lot to that. And in the interest of the time, I will then go, we have developed or formulated some concrete recommendations. But before I do that, I just want to speak very briefly to when child and youth participation and child and youth friendly governance is made an investment, it is a good investment because it brings results for everyone. It brings direct results for children and young people. Increased self-confidence, increased self-worth, sense of social belonging, a sense of developed agency. They learn the critical life skills like critical, like what do you say, solution, becoming solution-oriented, working in teams. They know how to manage budgets and do project development. They learn good communication skills. We see, and this is an important one, an increased motivation to do, to work with children and to listen to children and young people's voices amongst the staff and institutions working with them. In schools, we see that there's a direct link between children's motivation to go to school to learn and the participation. In health systems, we see that when children and young people are listened to, they are more likely to engage in their treatment plans and recover more quickly. The list is very long. And then again, we see positive outcomes on a society abroad. Increased trust in institutions, increased interest in voting. And yeah, there are many more, but just, it's really an investment. The point I want to make is that it's an investment that pays off for everyone when it's done well. So, some recommendations for this group. One, institutionalize. Explicitly name child and youth participation as a requirement in all DDPA implementation frameworks addressing racism in digital spaces. Consider investing in safe and inclusive participation infrastructures across DDPA processes. And call upon states as possible to institutionalize their commitments to non-discriminatory participation under their respective laws, policies, and budget allocations. And the last one is a really important one. Resource. So, dedicate funding stream to the extent possible to support child and youth inclusive participatory processes that meet international quality standards. Disaggregate. Disaggregate. Call on states to collect and report disaggregated data on digital experience of children from minoritized and marginalized groups. And connect. I think this is something we all call for. So, establish more formal linkages between this group's recommendations and that of the human rights monitoring mechanisms to also push this agenda. So, that was it from my side. Thank you so much for the time and again for the invitation. Thank you, Ms. Thivant, for your presentation. In your presentation, you have elaborated what CYFGP is as an organization, what is its work, what is its structure. You have emphasized on empowering institutions or your organization is actually working to empower institutions that are working in this field. You have highlighted facilitation and support aspect for children and youth and their participation in decision making and governance. You have also highlighted the role of policymakers, governments, multinational institutions, multilateral institutions in this regard. And towards the end of your presentation, you have come up with very pertinent recommendations, solutions and asks. So, thank you very much for this presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, we had three excellent presentations by three distinguished panelists, very relevant to today's subject on digital spaces and need for advancing education. We have to now open the floor for discussion. We have to now open the floor for discussion. But before opening the floor, I would request to my fellow members of this group, eminent experts, if they have to make any remarks or any interventions at this stage, and then we will open the floor. So, if any member of this group wants to make some comments on this subject, this is the time. Madam Mbogwa. Thank you. Thank you so much to all our presenters. You have given us quite a lot there. Good food for thought. And I first want to start with what, you know, the moderator for this session mentioned, Ambassador Khan, on having a holistic approach where we are really talking about addressing racism in digital spaces and advancing education to safeguard youth. I think, you know, we have an opportunity to be able to work with youth to advance or to actually look into how we can combat issues that affect human rights of people. We've seen, like, for example, how some of the movement has gone very well, you know, advanced by the youth themselves, like youth for climate change, you know, youth for climate justice, you know, because they come up with very innovative ideas. So, what I want to say is that if youth are actually included and included in every process, rather than just one self, to put into maybe some information that is needed, but to be included within the whole process of addressing issues, they can do it very well. And we have seen also with some kind of organizations, you know, like I know there's a panel, advisory panel with Fundamental Rights Agency, for example, to be advising on issues of human rights. Youth can be champions of human rights. Youth can be champions of human rights. They can be champions of so many things. And if actually they are included even to use the digital world properly, they can help with that. But by using that holistic approach that was mentioned earlier, it would be good based on all what our presenters have actually presented with even the solutions of this, how this can happen. I just actually wanted to point out, you know, an issue that kept on coming, and this is actually the whole issue of digital exclusion. And we've seen it, I've seen it even in my work, how it's not even only exclusion, it's also accessibility and affordability. Because it doesn't mean it's all youth, you know, or young people who would have access to the gadget even that they are needed. They may not even have access to a smartphone or an iPad or an iPhone. Any gadget that will help them even to start even accessing the information online. And then when we go to those who have, the challenges that they face, especially, you know, the youth from marginalized community, how they face issues of bullying we have had, issues of racism and hate online, which also lead to their mental health. We've seen this and I've seen this in my work, how some of them, you know, would exclude themselves even to engaging with the digital world because of their experiences of abuse and attack online. And coming up, you know, with the solutions of having stronger roles and policies in place to protect, you know, young people and the youth is also very important. But also in how we tackle the issues of mental health, you know, when they are tackled with these issues because of this abuse. And especially youth from, you know, black community, you know, Roma community, marginalized community that they are always targeted and bullied specifically because of where they are coming from. In terms of the strategies and laws that we have, I think they need to be strengthened. They need to be strengthened to be able to ensure that, you know, all youth and young people engage with the digital world accordingly. And this would be very, very important. Then accessibility in terms of, you know, even getting the internet itself. Not everybody who would get access to that. For example, we have seen during COVID time how some children were not even able to access, you know, the schoolwork, you know, online because they didn't have, you know, gadgets to be able to access. So this reality of the divide that we already have in terms of accessibility, you may have a gadget that is not even able to access the internet. You may be in a place where the signals are not good. So there are all these challenges that are there, you know, apart from, you know, the actual, you know, experience, you know, when you are online, which are real. I'll leave it there. Chair, thank you. Thank you, madam. Thank you very much for highlighting these very important points. I will now come to Jose. You want to add something? Thank you very much to our three panelists. Amazing presentations. And I think I'm very surprised by the work of our colleague from the organization and the focus groups that you develop with children. I think it's very important to hear their thoughts, their, to hear them, their voices, right, on how to design resources, educational resources from their point of view. But that leads me to a question to our three panelists. And in your experience, how is the engagement with ministries of education of different parts of the world? And how has been their response on the engagement of children in the development of educational resources and the governance? And of course, also the participation of their parents, which is very important as well to have their consent. How is your experience with that, with the Ministry of Education? Thank you. Coming to Joel, I will ask the panelists if they can respond to this specific question by Mr. Jose. So, yes, madam, you have the floor. Thank you. I wanted to respond to that and maybe just sort of add a reinforcing experience as well to the points that Madam Chair made. So, to the question about the ministries of education, obviously for UNICEF we engage with those in, across the 190 countries and territories in which we are present and active and have program collaborations. And maybe the most interesting example has been a program called Upshift, which is actually focused on those 21st century skills that Louise spoke about that the World Economic Forum had outlined and was really around critical thinking and problem solving and being innovative and agile and et cetera and having some of those financial sort of budgetary skills. And that was an initiative that came out of co-development in Kosovo with young people, so sort of teenagers typically in school. And it organically spread and what we saw was it taking on a life of sustainability and institutionalization as a business model that was surprising and different. Because ministries of education were coming to us saying, well, we want this thing and we want it because we see the value of the life skills of the pathway to employability that this creates in terms of young entrepreneurs and SME future holders. But because there's a program component that helps teachers and adults, the question was around family members, adults and community members, play their role as facilitators, mentors, et cetera. However, the power of what you do in that program, what problem set that you choose, it is entirely up to the young people. And it's the fastest implementation that we've seen in sort of less than 18 months of a government trying it, moving fully into adoption, putting it in their curriculum and in their budget line. And in fact, it has also resulted in some cases with a high level of public-private partnership because on the other end, public sectors see more valuable human resources coming out the other side of this. So, incredible support for something that they can see is different, but which requires the buy-in of saying this isn't a traditional pedagogical approach. And then I did want to add a sort of a comment also to what Louise was saying. Absolutely. So, in terms of that full cycle, UNICEF has a digital platform called YouReport, which facilitates 40 million young people in 90 countries, exactly around, you know, questions, you know, their input in designing certain elements, and it's been running for about 10 plus years. And very early on in that, the feedback was clear to us. Do not ask us a question without first telling us, why are you asking this of us? What's going to happen? What are you using with the data? And if we want to, you know, we'll participate, and then it's on you as well. We want to know what happens. And not only just, you know, in the next week or the next month. We're building a longitudinal relationship with our time, with our input and our ideas. And so this is kind of a social, sort of a type of social contract. And what we've seen from that is that young people, exactly as Louise was saying, take it upon themselves to come up with some better solutions to questions that we put forward. And not only those solutions, but build them out themselves. So I think we have learned from, you know, in a sense far more from that engagement than perhaps was the original intent. Ms. Rotino, you want to add something? Thank you. Yeah, no, I mean, I think Louise is probably best placed to respond to the question. But from our experience, I mean, ITU's natural constituencies are the ministries of ICTs or the regulators at the country level. But of course, due to the nature of the topic, when we work at the country level, that coordination is absolutely required. So in terms of sharp participation, a piloting project that we've been doing the past two years was to actually create, um, national child task forces in three countries that work together with the ministries of ICTs and the regulators on developing a national strategy on child online protection or online safety. And here, in the methodology and the process, of course, there was foreseen to involve all regular, all relevant entities and agencies at the country level, including the ministries of education, of course. And, you know, it was on three different continents and the way of working together was very different. And the collaboration between the ministries was very, very different. And I think especially on online safety for children and youth, really, one of the issues is the fragmentation and the silos and initiatives happening in silos. So the ministries of education consider their area and then the ministries of ICTs or the cybersecurity agencies their area. And they're not coordinated and they're not aligned and they don't collaborate. And I think this is something where children or the participation of children can actually be fundamentally helpful to bring everyone in that room and to kind of take that as a basic foundation for the collaboration because many of the children in these three countries have called for better cooperation between the authorities handling the topic. And this is why I was saying, you know, for them it's one environment. And they don't care if it's the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of ICT that takes care. What they want is that, you know, the online environment is safe and they can use it the way they want and with all the opportunities, access to the opportunities. And I also wanted to reiterate the holistic approach, not only in terms of, you know, from government up to education and participation, but really also in terms of capacity building, which was mentioned. You know, even capacity building needs to be inclusive in that sense. So inclusive to children, to their parents. We have data that shows the immense gap in understanding of online risks by children and by their caretakers that have no clue really on how the platforms work that children use. And obviously, as Louise was saying, children don't feel comfortable to seek help, you know, by their caretakers when it's about a situation on TikTok, because most of the caretakers do not understand the platform, right? And this is something that we try to build into our capacity building work to do this intersectoral, but also intergenerational conversations to bring parents and children together, because it's also some of the requests really that we receive from children, because they want to be felt or they want to feel safe and supported by those around them as well. But since there is this significant gap, this is also difficult to implement. Thank you. Ms. Thiemont, do you want to add any points here? Yes, I'd love to. And I'm really glad that question was asked. My answer would be very nuanced, but I'll start by saying if we ask children and young people what participation looks like within the education system, they will rate it very, very badly. And they, on the other hand, would very, very much like to see more of it. And why is that? I think what we see today is we see massive challenges within the education system. All the children and young people we have had focus group discussions with, we consulted, they're all extremely appreciative. They say that first thing. They recognize we don't all have the same quality education, but they're very appreciative of being afforded or being offered education. And, but they, they, but what we see is children and young people, they suffer well-being wise in school settings. There's incredible pressure on children and young people in terms of performance within schools. Just before we started, Ambassador Khan and I were talking about it even leads to suicides among children and young people. In certain countries children and young people go in school from eight to eight, there is no life. This puts immense pressure on, on the children. Dropouts are raising. Motivation is at an all time high. And what's really sad about it, I'll give you an interesting example. In Finland, which for many years were considered one of the best educational models, suddenly the PISA ranking dropped. Children and young people were performing less well according to this ranking system. And the first thing they did, they was, they consulted the children and young people, like where is the challenge? And this is interesting. We don't have a lot of evidence on this yet, but there is emerging pockets of evidence that demonstrate that there is a direct link between the children and young people's participation within the school environment because of, very much because of how it impacts them possibly, being they feel like their, their agency is considered, they feel like they're taking serious and respected and unworthy. And that therefore there is this direct link between the participation in school and motivation to show up and learn and be there and enjoy it as well. So, when we look at the education systems and the Ministry of Education, in many ways, many countries, there is a powerful commitment. School councils are established. But when we look at, when we look at how quite often they're there on paper, but they're not there in practice. And when they're there, what we see is, and before I kept on like just highlighting the importance of budgets, is that there's a lot of policies in place in many countries. There's a lot of commitments in place, but they're rarely allocated budgets and capacity building of the teachers that are expected to facilitate this. And so I think what we see working sometimes well within the education system is, and as Tanya from UNICEF referred to it, when we have like projects that schools can engage with, that can be like a certain amount of motivation to do that in some countries, which is a good place to start. Where we see it becomes a bit more difficult is when we get into the looking, like we look at the decision making within the internal school system. Because I think the way that the school education system is structured, it's a very hierarchical one really. So, and I think we don't have enough evidence today that speaks to the positive outcome. So I think this is one of the big musts, because without, you're not going to have a whole education sector change course before we have some kind of evidence that this is a good investment, that this is a good idea. So I think right now we see a lot more in the informal setting, but I think your question is very much on point and it's going to be a very important place to invest in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will now invite Professor Joel Modidi, who is a member of this group of experts, if he has any, to make any remarks, any observations or pose any question to the panelists on presentations. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. And thank you very much the speakers for really comprehensive accounts of the work that you're doing and indeed very helpful elaborations of how to tackle this question around digital inclusion for young people and how this connects to the work of fighting discrimination. So I very much appreciate the work that you're all doing in this regard. And I'd like to connect what we've heard today with some of the discussions that we had yesterday. One was really a discussion about far-right growth and the rise of right-wing politics and racial supremacist ideas and how those are finding fertile ground and mass expression through online and digital modes. But also to think a little bit about the larger political economy of this question. So this is a very general question on which I'm inviting your guidance and maybe your intervention in terms of the work that you're already doing. So on the one hand, the challenges of AI are that we're dealing with a moving target. It's constantly shifting and changing. And it's increasingly absorbing the cognitive life world of everyone, organizations and public and private. A few of the major risks that have been raised which connect with challenges around racial discrimination and racial inequality, of course, are the challenge of cognitive atrophy that's caused by over-dependence on AI, with many people saying, well, in addition to talking about digital inclusion, we also need to rebuild parks and we need to have kids also being kids and being outside and so forth. Job displacement, all this talk about humans being replaced. The use of AI in armed conflict, lethal autonomous weapons, for example. Most importantly, the challenge of the water and energy consumption that it takes increasingly to run these. So how do we square up the need to strengthen and expand digital access and digital inclusion while the machinery behind this, the technological machinery, has these major, major risks which have been described really as existential? In other words, is it merely a problem of regulation or do we also need a program of social transformation in order to ensure that the life worlds of young people are not completely taken over by technology and the digital? So that's my first really broad concern. The second one is that we talk a lot about regulation of these technologies. We're talking more and more about how the state in particular and how international bodies can set standards around regulating the use of these technologies. But we're not yet talking about ownership of these technologies. Many of them, of course, are owned by transnational corporate powers in the context of the U.S., very much linked to also certain kinds of problematic right-wing political forces. And I'm increasingly concerned about what is the connection between these tech giant corporations and the rise of fascism. And how are we managing that? Are we using and therefore supporting companies and corporations that, on the one hand, are generating these beneficial technologies that we want to use, we want to open up access for, but which also pose longer-term political risks? And how are you sort of engaging this? The final question is that one of the presenters yesterday introduced this very interesting notion about how the digital space can be a space for advancing what's called counter-extremist programming. So in other words, to the extent that we want to expand digital inclusion, how do we make sure that there is progressive human rights-driven content that can direct young people away from some of the more harmful, online information that seems to be the more predominant kind of content is the kind of harmful content? And are we thinking about counter-programming and content that challenges the more harmful narratives that we are seeing being propagated through these digital systems? Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. Thank you. Thank you very much. So basically three very absorbing questions. One is over-dependence on AI, whether it is leading to human replacement and what are other implications. The second is about regulation, how to regulate, how to have effective regulations in preventing any kind of discriminations. And then digital space, how counter- it can be used for counter-extremist programs and agendas. So I will now invite the panelists to address these questions in their respective domains. I'm going to try a whack at a few of them, but not maybe entirely in the way that you intended. I think to add maybe to, you know, you called it the political economy and you unpacked some of the broader, you know, the complete environmental and systematic requirements, whether it's energy, health, social cohesion or lack thereof, etc. And I'm a complete optimist, so I will sort of state this for a few things. I think in one sense it is either a moment of existential opportunity for an organization like the United Nations, because what we are seeing behind your question in terms of looking at companies, you know, you said who owns this? A number of them are private companies. They're not even publicly traded companies. Their incomes, their budgets, their revenues are bigger than most member states, or many. They are, you know, they're able to move their domains into tax havens and can move through different jurisdictions legally and plan, for example, their legal structures to the best advantage. And so what do you have as a counterweight in the world? And it is either going to be sort of in a sense, I believe, the making of an institution anew in this new world, with these new challenges, because where else do you go to save us from hell essentially, right? There was the promise of the UN, not necessarily to take everyone through the doors of heaven. And I think this is a moment to reinforce exactly that this is the institution who can do that, not only from, we would hope, a rights-based perspective, because that is the sort of the legal instruments that many, but not all governments have, you know, sort of signed up to and ratified, but because it remains one of the most sort of the highly effective mechanisms to have this discussion, because it is beyond national regulation, although national regulation plays a key part. It is like, you know, I think we've all sort of said, a matter of this coherence, alignment, and coordination, but at a global level. So where else does that happen but this sort of entity? So I would sort of say that is one piece. The other piece is maybe to deal with your last question, which is, you know, technology has always been agnostic, but it's really what we choose to do with it. So whether it was, in fact, energy or electricity or the motor vehicle or other things, the mobile phone, you know, but some of, obviously, has been much written about the issue of artificial intelligence, it's just the rapidity of its acceleration and the extent of which it is moving. And, you know, in terms of that, I think asking how we do counter-programming to any of the ills that we see, could be sexism, it could be, you know, racial discrimination and all these other areas, is not the right question, because it is not necessary, the answer is not necessarily a lack of content, because the content you see is driven by the algorithms that are built. And, you know, you could, if we don't deal with that algorithmic equity issue, who's building it, what data are they using to build it? I mean, in this case, two-thirds of the world is a giant black hole that does not exist, so there's no decision that can be made taking into account many of the people who live, you know, in Africa across great swaths of Asia, for example. So that is the area that we can be most effective in that, because what people are seeing is not necessarily a reflection of how much content or how good the content is. It's a reflection of the algorithms that the scientists, as you refer to them, the recommendation engines, the preferences, and the, you know, and then we get back to your first question of who owns it and what is the motivation behind this. Want to come here? Thank you. No, I mean, I think many, many points were raised, but just maybe to reiterate, of course, I mean, risks and harms online are increasing at scale, and we have these new evolving technologies, but many of the things we see are just a question of scale or mutuation, if you want, of existing, of course, you know, realities. And I think, as we mentioned, for children and for human beings, really, online and offline are just a continuum. So we have to treat the risks and the harms that they occur. And, of course, I think we cannot separate the two spheres. So we do need to have that more holistic view and perspective, and also in our approach, both in prevention and response. We cannot separate the environments. And I think in terms of regulation, we need to be very nuanced, because, you know, it's a very sensitive topic, and we see those, you know, we see those examples. At the moment, there's a lot of discussions about regulation when it comes to online safety for children and young people, adolescents, really, particularly. And it's really pilots, I would say. It's initial, you know, policy action. And we will have to see where this goes and how it works out, because it is very sensitive in terms of what do we restrict and how do we restrict it, and how does it work. And children have very interesting perspectives, really. You have children that are very in favor of limitations for under-13-year-olds on content. Others focus more on the type of platforms. Third, focus on the type of interactions that are allowed, you know. So it's very different and very differentiation based on how this is approached. And we will have to see what works just yet, and how definitely this needs to be embedded in broader discussions and social systems, absolutely. And I think this is why one of the elements is really safety by design, and anything that we do now, because of course now we are reacting. But as you said, this is so fast evolving. If we are always only reacting, then we will be always too late. So I think it is everything that is built from now, and that we work on, is really to have those standards as of the outset. So we have to work on those efforts a lot, I think. Mr. Thivont, do you want to respond to any of these questions? Yes, thank you. Difficult questions, and important ones. I will share a few brief reflections in complementation to what my colleagues have raised. On the one of the dependency that just caught my attention, because here we have had some really interesting findings from our engagement with children and young people. And I mentioned the Safer Internet for Kids consultations that we supported a couple of years ago. And what we saw there was, just to bring their voices into this discussion, that we saw two kind of strands. Everyone was very concerned, very concerned. Generally children are very, again, learning opportunities that the online and digital life offers, and it creates great excitement. The possibility to connect with families and friends across, it's socially very, very important for them. And it's something they learn to value very highly. But they're equally concerned from us. What we hear was that they have, you know, they react with surprise a little bit to these, like, current discussions about the regulations on social media. And the question is, like, why are we being regulated? And I think where we sit, like, there's clearly challenges is there and solutions has to be found. I'm a lawyer. I'm in favor of regulations. But we believe focus should, in terms of regulations, we should focus on the tech companies, on finding solutions there. And we see ITU, the great organizations like the Digital Futures Commission, and Fire Rights do amazing work. Also POP, another initiative where discussions are being had. So that's very important. I think we can have discussions about regulations with children and young people. But our recommendation here would be have the discussions with them about the solutions. Like, you know, Fanny mentioned a couple. But another one we hear is also, like, how can we better regulate the time we spend? And, but then on dependency, just to stay with that one, what we saw amongst these children and young people was that the older children here, who probably have been exposed from a later age, they were very concerned. They were worried they spent too much of their life. They were beginning to count the hours. How much did they spend on a year online, on something they cannot even remember? And on gaming, on, on, on, on, um, scrolling and that sort of activities. And there was like a certain sadness to it. Then what was interesting is the younger group of that children here, we were having discussions down to the age of eight. We saw anger. They told us, why do you adults, like you have raised us with iPads and phones as pacifiers. I mean, that's a very, very strong visual, no? Why? You see us developing dependencies. We're becoming addicts. Why are you not helping us? So like I, and I, I see this as a tendency that's beginning to get pick up. And there's wanting for us. Like you see many consultations about give us the solutions. And they, many of the young people was like, no, you find the solution to these problems you created. No, like they, they're not happy. They've been raised like this. Right. And, um, yeah, so that was on the dependency and, and, and, and the regulation. And then on countering, uh, the harmful programs. Yes, much has to be done there. What has to be done first and foremost, I think is, and what we hear from children and young people is, help them navigate what is out there. And what they tell us, like, they, it's like our adults, they have no idea what's happening online. Our teachers, they have no idea. And our teachers, they're also really afraid of talking about it. Because what if they don't say the right thing and there isn't any guidance within the education system yet. So they don't, they stay clear of these discussions. And what's, uh, so I think preparing teachers, preparing adults, getting, you know, like helpful information out there that can help adults everywhere to have these discussions with children. It's very, very critical. And, uh, what is even more important and more concerning is children and young people today, they don't feel like they have anyone they can come to. They see, we see stuff that shakes us. Like children are taking their own lives over what has interactions they've had. Sometimes we don't know what. They say, we're definitely not going to go to our parents. Then they're just going to take our screens away from us and we can't socialize. Obviously not teachers. And, uh, and then we just like who? And it's like no one. We go to our friends. And, um, but how well are these other children and young people equipped to help? But I think that's where they go. So this is another group we need to consider in and, and also help equip these peer to peer networks. Obviously with guidance and advice on how to deal with these situations. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think this, uh, on time you spend online is becoming an important feature of a regular feature of our lives. And sometimes after a very busy day, when I see my telephone tells me that I've spent this much time online, I'm really worried. And I'm more worried because the youth are actually all the time on the line. All my students are all the time online, whether in the class or whether during the meal or doing anything else. So I think it is going to be an important feature that will have to be, uh, that will have need monitoring also. That will need, uh, smarter approaches, innovative approaches, or how to bring these things under control of, or how to bring these things into better regulation. With this, we have now, um, come to the stage where we have to open the floor for comments and questions by delegations. I would like to underline here that representatives of the civil society and academia, when you take the floor, please state which organization you are representing. So the floor is now open for any remarks, any questions, any observations. I see the, uh, delegation, delegate of the Dominican Republic. You have the floor. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much. First, I'd like to thank the group of independent experts for organizing this meeting, as well as for their contributions and those from the panelists and the panelists from the previous meetings. This is a very effective format. We have a question, but we first just want to give a bit of background. The Dominican Republic is still committed to the Durban program, and, Decoration Program of Action, and will support it in all multilateral forum mechanisms. We have the constitutional framework and appropriate amendments, but we would like to just share the latest changes. We have created a Ministry of Justice, a Vice Ministry of Human Rights, a system and Council on Human Rights, which bolsters the existing inter-institutional committee on human rights. But in addition, we're also amending the legislation on telecommunications. We're holding consultations with our people, including teenagers, trying to address the new challenges that this reality brings with it. The most important thing is that we amend our code, including penalties, which will impact public policy, and will therefore prosecute any act of discrimination in access to goods and services, employment, use of public space, and it includes corporate responsibility, which is relevant in the field of telecommunications. We also have a good practice, including children, which is the kids club or kids clubs. But against this backdrop, with the various progress that's been made in terms of telecommunications and communications and communications in general, and countries that are making headway in the legal framework, well, what can we do to be up to speed? What specific steps can we take to try to strike a balance between prosecuting these offences and also creating policies for prevention? Combining this with existing policies, which have been shaped according to the framework that was in place at the time, and now there's this updating process that's required for public policy on the basis of this new legal framework. Thank you. Thank you, the Delegation of Dominican Republic. Thank you very much for your commitment to DDPA. And the points you have raised, any of the panelists want to respond to these points? Ms. Ortino, you have the floor. Thank you very much for the questions. I think just, you know, reminding a little bit some of the experiences that we have had in the countries, in 30 countries in the past three years where we have assisted member states in developing national strategies on online safety or child online protection. Indeed, as I mentioned, one of the issues raised very often is that there is great initiatives at the country level, be it from an educational perspective, awareness campaigns nationwide, individual policies and frameworks. But the problem is coordination, cooperation and alignment. So what we have been doing with countries is through co-creation workshops and capacity building with all relevant stakeholders, from law enforcement up to policy education systems, children, young people, parents, caretakers, etc. to bring really everyone in a room and kind of co-create a national strategy on online safety that provides responsibilities, roles and responsibilities, a clear framework for implementation, a roadmap, and a way of working together between these entities. In many countries this has been initiated with a national assessment and a gaps analysis, so identifying what is existent in the country, what is working, and where may be the gaps in, you know, comparing to international standards on online safety and child protection in the digital environment. And then together identify how to overcome these gaps and find the individual solutions. And very often this has indeed resulted in those national strategies and roadmaps for implementations that helped better orchestrate that holistic approach that we have been talking about at the national level. And of course also in cooperation with international stakeholders and organizations. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, madam. And if I could briefly just add, I think commendable to be meaningfully and intentionally engaging young people in this whole process. I think that speaks in the direction towards what we heard from the final speaker. And I would also, you know, sort of say we've done some research in terms of policy reviews that were done and what could be learned and what could be strengthened when redesigning or auditing legal frameworks, and that is one of the resources sort of available. So I would say tap into that. And we also have a digital equality framework that is sort of a ready-to-go tool for policymakers and government officials and leaders to really get a sense of benchmarking, you know, where you are, maybe where you would like to go, understanding where things maybe did not go so well or, you know, shortcomings that could not have been foreseen originally but now you can foresee them because someone's been generous enough to sort of share the experience of some pitfalls. So, you know, definitely please do make hearty use of that. And then I think obviously at the national level ourselves and others around the whole UN country team, you know, very much involved in supporting UN all of these very important processes at a kind of a key moment in technology development. Mr. Wont, you want to say anything? Yes, just very brief. Prosecution very important. Prevention, I think, critical here, giving the very direct impact that we see on children and young people's lives. But also, I'll just get back to that. But again, I think number one priority, the way we would see it is make sure that in this work you do, I would recommend having some focus on creating these safe environments where children and young people can come to when they have experienced something harmful online. I think that is right now. We need to react and we need to react now. That cannot wait. In terms of prevention, we talked a lot about that, the need to train informed teachers so they are capable of having these discussions. And then also the children and young people to be better because they are the first responders and that's not going to change tomorrow. So I think involving children and young people, I think they will be very well placed to tell you what that could look like. And what we know is children and young people listen to children and young people. So for any awareness raising, any campaigns, I think it would be worth the while considering having that done in collaboration with children and young people. It can be television shows, podcasts, like the social media where they are on. Identify with the children and young people in the Dominican Republic. Where are they? Where should they reach out? And have them communicated? Like, I am a lawyer. I feel like I spend a lot of time on working on digital safety and child participation. So I live here in Switzerland. Like recently I received as a parent, I received guidance on how I should engage with my children. I don't understand what is written. You know, it doesn't relate to me. So if you want to reach teachers, work with teachers on how to communicate. If you want to reach young people and children, work with children and young people how to communicate these important messages. Because guidance and policies, it's not getting much beyond the ministerial doors in most countries. Thank you, Ms. Devont. The floor is open for comments, questions. Delegation of Eurogwe, you have the floor. Good morning, everybody. First, I would like to thank the group of experts for organizing these public consultations where we have the opportunity to have a frank dialogue on various issues that are very important and which need to be discussed in these times that we are living. First of all, on the theme of the panel, I would like to highlight in principle that we understand that the digital environment offer opportunities for participation, expression, organization and leadership from young people. But also, given what you said and what the panelists explained, this can lead to stereotypes, discriminatory narratives, threats and other forms of exclusion. So, from that point of view, we understand that human rights education, historic memory and digital education are key tools to try to prevent racial discrimination, combat stereotypes, try to ensure that we learn from history and hear from the voices of those who have been affected. We also understand that addressing these challenges involves looking beyond just the use of the technology. We need to try to strengthen digital skills and ensure educational inclusive content and generate conditions so that young people may participate, learn and develop themselves. We also believe it's important to see the role of teachers and schools and that they be properly equipped to respond to situations of racism. And the same goes for the digital sphere. Young people need to be seen as rights holders and as agents of change. They need to take, we need to look at their experience in public policies when it comes to tackling racial discrimination and promoting equality. Acknowledging that youth can be the creator of narratives and solutions. And finally, we'd like to share a national experience that we think was a success story. And that's called Over to You from People of African Dessent in Uruguay. And this was organized with the UN and civil society organizations. And we had the main goal of strengthening identity, citizenship and the participation of the youth of people of African descent through awareness raising campaigns, through social networks and providing inputs on the basis of information and lived experience. Finally, we should also reiterate the commitment of Uruguay and the importance that we place on safe digital environments, including places free of racism, along with educational policies that will bolster historical memory, digital literacy, significant participation and leadership from young people in all. Thank you. Thank you. I thank the delegation of Uruguay for emphasizing this importance of human rights education, digital education, developing digital skills, training of teachers, and then sharing a success story about how in Uruguay, identity and citizenship for people of African descent has made very useful progress. projects need a new policy and can help as an officer, access and police can't help again. I'll speak in Spanish now. So, Uruguay's comments. I think that you also have sound experience on digital education with the Salval Plan, which was an example for Latin America as a whole on digital education. So, I would highlight that as an example, but also how through that kind of plan, let's talk about digital citizens, as an example of how young people and children can interact in line, and that was important. So, I'd invite all experts and participants to have a look at this plan that was successful in Uruguay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jose. Thank you very much for this edition of information. So, I think since there are no other delegations wishing to take floor, we have reached the end of a very productive, we are approaching the end of a very productive session today on digital spaces. It is an evolving topic, evolving challenges, evolving situations, and we will continue to have more discussions on this subject and how DDP, strengthening of DDP, implementation of DDP would help us in dealing with the situation, will help the world in dealing with the challenges arising in terms of discrimination andophobia and intolerance. I will now give the floor back to the distinguished panelists for any concluding remarks they want to make as we move towards the conclusion of the session. Yes, I think just a last note of thanks, you know, to the delegations here present, but also to the committee and the panel for putting this together and drawing attention, especially to the situation of children on this important topic of racism and discrimination, because that really literally is where, you know, harms can begin and they do last a lifetime. So, very much appreciate this and also very much supportive of this expert mechanism and influence that it has in not only gathering this kind of dialogue and input, but in the outputs of the group as well. So, thank you for the invitation to be involved. Thank you very much. Equally echoing, thanks for this discussion and for inviting us. And I think just a key reiteration is, and I think it has come through all the interventions, is that we need to consider, you know, children and young people as the experts here. And I think there is a discussion. We have focused a lot around children, but there is also youth as those that are, you know, less protected even by rights, but, you know, than children. And often it's children that fall through the cracks, but also in these discussions it's very much youth. So, young adults that don't benefit of the same safeguards in terms of regulations or policies than children, and still, you know, are exposed to many risks and situations. So, I think considering them, especially in this environment, as the experts around everything that we do, from education to governance and these kind of discussions included. So, yeah, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ms. Devont. Your final message? No, just very briefly, as I second everything said by my colleagues, to express my appreciation for being here, for this dialogue. It's going to be an important dialogue to continue. And, yeah, and I think if one thing just to mention is we quite often, like, the importance of, and I appreciate what we discussed here today. We have a strong focus both on young people and on children, and we're an organization that works with both, but quite often we see that there's either a tendency to focus on one or the other. And just to highlight, this is a transitional phase. You don't become adult overnight. It's a scary one as well, an exciting one, but a scary one. So, we just welcome, you know, everyone in Deaver, you know, like, who will invest more in this in the future to consider both groups. And also supporting them, those children moving into early adulthood. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with this, I give the floor back to Ms. Ambugwa, chairperson of this group of independent eminent experts. You have the floor for leading us to conclusion. Thank you. Thank you so much, moderator. Thank you to our presenters. And I'm just still thinking, you know, on this topic and what we have been discussing. And I'm still very much in the, you know, frame of thinking about the digital divide and that, you know, there are still children who are left behind or the youth who are left behind because of this digital behind. And how can we digital divide? How can we cross this digital divide? So, I'll leave you with that to question ourselves more. Because when we even link it to the sustainable development goals of leaving no one behind, that there are youth and young people who can help maybe to advance our fight for equality and human rights when they have the use of proper digital, you know, spaces. And yet they can't do it because they don't have access at all. And I'm talking about all the youth and children globally. I'm not talking about children here or children in different, you know, regions and continents as well. But we should think about that digital divide based on the language, based on accessibility and all those things that you have spoken about. I'm also concerned about, you know, when you look at the DPPA, the issue of access to justice, you know, for youth and young people who, you know, get abused and affected. You know, we spoke about issues of mental health affecting these youth. Is there any access to justice and remedies, you know, that are in place for these young people? Because they should be actually, you know, get that, get those remedies and get even access for mental health issues as well and other remedies as well. And also the reporting mechanism that also we have in place, you know, that they could be facing a lot of issues online, but they are not able to, you know, access, you know, the way to report or they don't even know how to report. We spoke about, you know, having no one to report to. And what I've seen actually and what I know from my work is that, you know, many young people are turning to AI as their boyfriend, as their friends, as their girlfriends, you know, because they can talk to them and they can do that throughout the night. They don't need to go out, you know, to have friends. They can have the AI talking to them throughout the night. So we are in digital spaces also which are very much, you know, problematic at the moment because you don't know what the children are putting themselves into. Because they'll ask for a question and they'll be answered. So as I close, and sorry, Mr. Moderator, because I had just gone back to the conversation of the meeting, I just want to thank everybody and especially again our speakers. And I want now to bring to an end of our third meeting. And I wish to thank everyone, the presenters, the participants who have stayed with us up to this far for your contribution and also important deliberation. We will reconvene later today at 3 p.m. with a thematic discussion of AI and data collection tools, new opportunities for strengthening DDPA, monitoring and follow up. And I really encourage each and every one of us to come back at 3 p.m. for these very interesting discussions. I hereby close the third public meeting of the 12th session of the group of independent, eminent experts on the implementation of the Darban Declaration and Program of Action. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.