Joint position paper on behalf of: Child Rights Connect, Alana Institute, ChildFund Alliance, Child Rights International Network (CRIN), ECPAT, Foundation for the Student Rights (Poland), Make Mothers Matter, Plan International, Plataforma de Infancia, Save the Children, SOS Children’s Villages, Terre des Hommes International Federation, World Vision International and 5Rights Foundation.

Overarching Principles for the Global Digital Compact
The digital environment plays an increasingly significant role across most aspects of children’s lives, offering opportunities but equally presenting significant risks. One in three internet users is a child, and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s development, relationships, education and play are increasingly mediated by digital technologies.

Children have long-established rights and protections under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and a life mediated by technology must be held to these standards. Thus, in today’s world, where the line between a child’s online and offline lives is increasingly blurred, it is essential to acknowledge that children’s rights apply fully in the digital environment.

The obligations of States to respect, protect and fulfill child rights in the digital environment, as well as the responsibilities of the business sector to respect, prevent, mitigate, and, where appropriate, remedy abuses, are clearly explained in the Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment
No. 25.

The UN Global Digital Compact is the opportunity to drive awareness and reinforce the global political commitment to the implementation of children’s existing rights as set out in the UNCRC and its General comments in the digital world and focus on political will. We recommend that the UN Global
Digital Compact reaffirm the core tenets of children’s rights in the digital environment and include the following key overarching principles to guide all the identified thematic priorities:
• Recognize that international human rights law, including the UNCRC, applies in full in the digital environment. All children’s rights must be respected, protected, and fulfilled in practice online, including but not limited to products and services specifically designed for them or directed toward them.
• The digital environment must be safe and age-appropriate for children, taking into account that children are not a homogenous group, respect their full range of rights and be designed and operated with their best interests in mind, integrating privacy, safety and security by design and by default.
• Ensuring the respect and fulfilment of the right of the child to be heard with regards to the digital environment, taking children’s views and the diversity of their situations into account by States in the development of laws, policies and by businesses in their activities, including in relation to the design, development, operation, and marketing of their products and services.

The promotion, protection and implementation of children’s rights in the digital environment must be a core principle of the UN Global Digital Compact and across all its thematic areas.

Background
The digital environment plays an increasingly significant role across most aspects of children’s lives. One in three internet users is a child, and, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s development, relationships, education and play are increasingly mediated by digital technologies.

The digital environment is predominantly privately designed, owned, operated, and largely unregulated. Regulating and enforcing businesses’ responsibility to respect children’s rights, prevent and remedy abuse of their rights, including through providing children with a high level of privacy,
safety and security by design and default, and upholding consistent global standards, is urgent for ensuring children’s rights in the digital environment.

Meaningful and equal access to safe digital technologies can support children to realize the full range of their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. Children particularly value access to information and exchange, and to expression and having their voice heard. Yet millions of children have no access to the digital environment at all. There is a growing cost for children from the digital divide, including the gender-related digital divide.

Children are not a homogenous group; their agency, age and maturity, and different needs must be taken into account. Also, some children are disproportionately affected by the risks of the digital world, given the intersecting situations of vulnerability they may face. For instance, children with
disabilities, girls, or children coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds face different barriers, including the digital divides. Thus, it is important to acknowledge that gender, age, disability, and other inter-sectional factors impact children’s different experiences online, which must be carefully
considered.

The digital environment must be safe for children and respect their full range of rights. At present, children’s presence goes largely unrecognized and uncatered for on most of the digital platforms where children spend most of their time. Children are consequently exposed to a wide range of
significant risks in the digital environment relating to content, contact, conduct and contract. These encompass, among other things, unfair terms, dark patterns, persuasive design, profiling and automated processes for user retention and information filtering. Children experience egregious outcomes, including addiction, exposure to violent, radical and sexual content, hate speech, disinformation, cyberaggression and harassment, body dysmorphia, gambling, exploitation and abuse, including sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as economic exploitation, including child labour and exploitation of their vulnerabilities for commercial purposes, and the promotion of or incitement to suicide or life-threatening activities. The growing impact on children’s development, physical and mental health, and well-being is well-documented.

Implementation of children’s rights in the digital environment
The obligations of States to respect, protect and fulfil child rights in the digital environment, as well as the responsibilities of the business sector to respect, prevent, mitigate and, where appropriate, remedy abuses, are clearly explained in General Comment No. 25. Implementing of State obligations
and corporate responsibilities requires effective action.

To do so, States should prioritize two core actions:
1. Developing and implementing comprehensive policies and action plans for children’s rights in the digital environment.
2. Legislating to ensure business responsibility to respect children´s rights, and prevent and remedy abuse of their rights in relation to the digital environment.

Comprehensive policy for children’s rights in the digital environment
States parties must urgently review and update their national policy frameworks to ensure a holistic and comprehensive approach to implementing children’s rights in the digital environment in line with the UNCRC. This should include:
• Identifying and building institutional capacity to ensure a holistic and coordinated approach to implementing children’s rights in the digital environment across policies, programmes, government departments, industry sectors and geographies – taking into account children’s
views in all their diversity.
• Mobilizing, allocating and utilizing public resources to implement legislation, policies and programmes needed to address the increasing impact of the digital environment on children’s rights and to promote the equality of access to, and affordability of, services and connectivity. Specific measures will be required to close the gender-related digital divide for girls. Children with disabilities and the development of assistive technologies should also be a particular focus of attention.
• Undertaking a comprehensive review of national child protection policies and legislation to take full account of the digital environment and online-offline dynamics.
• Ensuring access to justice for children’s rights violations in the digital environment, by providing for strong and effective monitoring, complaint, investigation, enforcement and redress mechanisms, ensuring systemic responses to support and respond to crimes, including enabling effective investigation, reviewing sanctions and sentencing frameworks. Complaint and reporting mechanisms should be free of charge, safe, confidential, responsive, child-friendly, and available in accessible formats. Particular attention should be paid to preventing and tackling gender-based violence and child sexual exploitation and abuse.
• Mandating the use of child rights impact assessments (including child data protection impact assessments) to embed children’s rights into legislation, budgetary allocations and other administrative decisions and procedures relating to the digital environment and promote their use among public bodies.
• Establishing a coordinated multi-stakeholder framework – including the technology sector and civil society organizations – to tackle risks and promote the exercise by children of their rights in the digital environment, including effective legal and regulatory enforcement mechanisms, prevention, remedies and access to expert advice on child online safety and well-being. This should include promoting child-centred design, minimum standards, industry agreements, adoption of best practice and cultural awareness and resourcing of children’s safety and well-being in the digital environment through regulation, enforcement of existing legislation and frameworks that relate to corporate responsibility.
• Identifying and filling knowledge and capacity gaps, including strengthening and re-aligning the capacity and capability of law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies in the child online safety field, and providing training for professionals working for and with children, as well as the technology industry.
• Investing in awareness raising and education to prevent likely harms and promote positive internet use and the empowerment of children. This includes providing resources and support to teachers, parents and caregivers.
• Ensuring the respect and fulfilment of the rights of the child to be heard in the digital environment, taking children’s views and the diversity of their situations into account in the development of laws, policies and frameworks.
• Investing in and promoting research and data collection to inform legislation, policy and practice. States must improve their national data systems and ensure the measurement of the prevalence of child sexual exploitation and abuse to assess trends and progress towards its elimination.
• Recognizing that the digital environment is an essential space to enable children to exercise their civil and political rights and facilitating the creation of empowering and safe digital spaces for child human rights defenders (CHRDs) and the exercise by children of their civil and political rights online. Ensuring that CHRDs, in all their diversity, can safely exercise their rights online free from harm and reprisals.

Legislation for corporate responsibility
The business sector, including not-for-profit organizations, affects children’s rights directly and indirectly in the provision of services and products relating to the digital environment. Businesses have the responsibility to respect children’s rights, and prevent and remedy abuse of their rights in relation to the digital environment, as set out in the UNCRC General comments No. 25 and No. 16. States parties have the obligation to ensure that businesses meet these responsibilities, and should develop, pass, and enforce legislation:
• Requiring businesses to undertake child rights due diligence, in particular, to carry out child rights impact assessments and effectively mitigate any risks posed by their products and services to children.
• Requiring businesses to recognize child users and take into account the diversity of their situations.
• Requiring the business sector to provide children with a high level of privacy, safety and security by design and default, enforcing the adoption of children’s rights by design standards.
• Requiring businesses to implement regulatory frameworks, industry codes and terms of services that adhere to the highest standards of ethics, privacy and safety in relation to the design, engineering, development, operation, distribution and marketing of their products and services, including for artificial intelligence.
• Holding businesses accountable for infringements of children’s rights facilitated by their products or services, including through the design and operation of digital services.
• Prohibiting the unlawful digital surveillance of children by businesses, particularly in commercial settings and educational and care settings.
• Prohibiting the use of children’s personal data and targeting of children using techniques designed to prioritize commercial interests over those of the child, including behavioural advertising.
• Requiring businesses to maintain high standards of transparency and accountability.
• Requiring businesses to provide children, parents, and caregivers with prompt and effective remedies.
• Requiring businesses to provide age-appropriate explanations to children, and parents and caregivers for very young children, of their terms of service.
• Encouraging businesses to actively engage with children, applying appropriate safeguards, and give their views due consideration when developing products and services.
• Encouraging businesses to take measures to innovate in the best interests of the child.
• Encouraging businesses to provide public information and accessible and timely advice to support children’s safe and beneficial digital activi