Tirana, 18 November 2024 – On the World Day for The Prevention of Violence and Sexual Exploitation of Children, we, a coalition of 77 organisations working in children’s rights, urgently call on Parliaments in all European countries and in the EU: adopt critical laws to protect children from violence, abuse and sexual exploitation, online and offline.

Europe is facing a child sexual abuse crisis. Available data shows that around 1 in 5 children in Europe have experienced some form of sexual violence. In Albania, 1 in 10 children has experienced some form of sexual violence and harassment, at least once in their life. This means that at least 60,000 children and adolescents in the country are victims of online and offline sexual violence.

Children are affected by this phenomenon, regardless of their social, economic, cultural and geographical prey, facing abuse in different environments – from family, school, community, social media and gaming platforms to institutional settings.

Online, the scale, severity of violence and sexual exploitation of children have spiraled out of control. More than half  of young people report experiencing   some form of  online sexual violence in their childhood. More than 100 million images or videos of children being sexually assaulted were found online last year, and that may just be the tip of the iceberg. 98%  of these images show children under 13 who have to live with the constant trauma of their abuse circulating online constantly.

“For a very long time, I was very stressed, and I slept very badly[…] What would happen if those images came out and what would everyone think of me? […] In my head everything had taken a sort of catastrophic proportion of where my life was going to end” – Nora, surviving sexual violence.

In the current online and unregulated world, children are easily contacted by offenders, manipulated into sharing their intimate images and sent inappropriate content. Online demands on children for sexual activity (known as ‘seduction’) increased by  more than 300% between  2021 and 2023.

Children e Age 3-6 aged are being seduced and forced to engage in sexual behavior, including penetrative and sadistic activities, through webcams. In the absence of adequate safeguards, encrypted platforms are used by offenders to exploit children to impunity. In addition to this, Intelligence artificial and virtual reality is being used to create child sexual abuse material at the click of a button.

It shouldn’t be like this! Together we can take action to end the crisis of sexual violence against children and protect children from further harm.

All states have the opportunity to pass better and stronger laws to protect children from sexual violence and exploitation. In Albania, the Assembly since February keeps in its drawers, without explanation or reason, CRCA Albania’s proposals for amendments to the Criminal Code for the protection of children from sexual violence. These proposals have neither been considered nor approved, although it is almost a year since their submission! The question we have for the Assembly and especially for the Commission of Laws is: If you don’t protect children, then who are you protecting? 

Meanwhile, EU member states and members of the European Parliament have a critical opportunity to adopt a strong EU legislative framework, with the Regulation on preventing  and combating  child sexual  abuse and the     Retransmission Directive on Abuse  Sexually child. These laws must be tailored to the realities children face offline and online and provide comprehensive protection and prevention measures that ultimately protect children’s rights. The Regulation should enable the prevention, detection, removal and reporting of all forms of child sexual abuse content (including grooming) in all online spaces where children are present, including encrypted spaces. The directive should criminalize online child sexual abuse as much as offline, extend limitation periods for reporting, and require States to provide an evidence-based, trauma-informed and child-centric response to child sexual abuse.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and General Comment No. 25 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child is clear that  the highest interest of the child should always be considerations and at the centre of all decisions in relation to children. We today publicly urge law-makers in Albania and the EU to act in full respect of international standards when deciding on these pieces of legislation.

Together these tools can effectively tackle the current crisis of sexual violence against children by creating a real and virtual society safe for childhood and for children everywhere in Europe.

Signed by:



Detajet e Lajmit
November 18, 2024
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