International exchange of experience on mechanisms for reporting child sexual abuse material

On 14-18 November, a delegation of the Republic of Moldova participated in a study visit to Portugal, organized in partnership with INHOPE. Representatives of the Cybercrime Investigations Directorate and of the International Center La Strada attended the Hotline Training Meeting, an annual event organized by INHOPE for all hotline services part of the INHOPE network.

The purpose of the study visit was to learn about the best practices to combat child sexual abuse materials and mechanisms for the operation of illegal material reporting services, in order to validate the concept and regulation of the organization and operation of the hotline service as a single mechanism for public reporting of child sexual abuse materials and ensuring the exchange of information internationally with the global network INHOPE.

This event included discussion of opportunities for the development of hotline services, training and information sessions for analysts who are tasked to analyze and classify reported child sexual abuse materials, to exchange best practices, successes and challenges with hotline services in the 46 states in which such services operate. The participants attended several workshops on combating child sexual abuse materials, with thematic presentations from academia, private companies in the ICT sector, as well as IT specialists.

The Moldovan delegation also had bilateral meetings with representatives of the police subdivision specialized in combating cybercrime and the Portuguese Hotline Linha Alerta service responsible for blocking illegal internet content.

The creation of the mechanism for reporting child sexual abuse materials is in line with the priorities of combating online sexual abuse and exploitation, set out in the Information Security Strategy of the Republic of Moldova for 2019-2024, in the action plan for the implementation of the National Child Protection Program for 2022-2026. In the context of the Republic of Moldova being granted the status of candidate for accession to the European Union, one of the actions to ensure the strengthening of the fight against organized crime, provided for in the action plan for the implementation of the steps proposed by the European Commission in its Opinion on Moldova’s EU membership application, aims at creating the concept of a mechanism for reporting sexual abuse (Step 5.1, Action 3.2).