Tirana 1 May 2020 – During the last three weeks alone, more than 1,300 pages of child pornography have been reported on the National Hotline ISIGURT.al, accessible to every child and young person in Albania. Compared to the same period last year, we are dealing with a 100-fold increase in reports of child pornography pages.
“The National Hotline ISIGURT.al finally had its chance to show its value for receiving, dealing eliminating sites with illegal content widely accessible by children in Albania. Despite the extremely high number of reported pages and the limitations we have had due to Covid19, our staff and experts managed to close these pages in time, thanks to the excellent cooperation we have with Facebook and the Cybercrime Section of the National Police Authority.” -said Altin Hazizaj, Director of CRCA/ECPAT Albania, the organisation running the hotline.
Most of the reported pages were not hosted in Albania but were easily accessible to children. During the same time was noted that a disturbing increase in the number of adult pornography pages in Albanian language, easily visible to children also. According to our experts, only during the past week, they managed to close 36 pornographic pages in the Albanian language with violent content also against children.
Given this alarming increase in reports of child online abuse, next week, CRCA/ECPAT Albania together with the National Hotline ISIGURT.AL will hold a joint Albania-Kosovo Web-Forum, where MPs, police experts of both countries, representatives of the industry, journalists and major children’s rights organizations, will discuss this new trend while call for urgent actions to address such concerns at all levels.
CRCA/ECPAT Albania, in the last 15 years, has been actively engaged for the online protection of children and young people. The collaboration with global platforms such as Facebook and Google has made it possible to protect children and young people from violence, bullying and online exploitation in Albania, while most of the national authorities are still far from protecting children from online sexual crimes.
For more information or to report, contact:
National Hotline www.ISIGURT.AL
Email: isigurt@isigurt.al