Minister calls for joint push on children's online safety

Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja called on Wednesday for coordinated efforts by the government, technology companies, parents and civil society to ensure a safe digital environment for children and young people.

Addressing the Digital Tahaffuz Summit in Islamabad, the minister said the growing role of digital platforms in communication, education, healthcare, entertainment and access to information had made it imperative to protect children from online harms, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported. The state agency's dispatch was dated October 28 and filed from Islamabad.

The call was addressed to four sets of actors (her own government, the companies that run the platforms, parents and civil society organisations) and the APP report described no single mechanism announced at the summit through which that coordination would work.

On the same day, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan warned that the country was failing to protect children and that cases of online sexual abuse remained underreported, according to reports carried by ANI News and Malaysia Sun. Both outlets ran the same headline: "Pakistan fails to protect children as online sexual abuse cases remain underreported, warns HRCP".

The accounts published by the two outlets gave no figures behind the warning, no text of any commission statement and no indication of the form in which it was issued. This newspaper could not independently verify the commission's assessment.

The minister's speech and the commission's warning appeared in the same news cycle, though neither account referred to the other.

APP did not report any new legislation, funding commitment or enforcement mechanism announced at the summit, and its dispatch did not identify the organisers of the event or list the other participants. As reported, the minister's contribution was a call for collaborative effort rather than a policy announcement.