‘UNICEF working with police to combat sexual abuse of children online’

AMMAN — Six cases of online sexual exploitation of children have been recently detected by the concerned authorities after the establishment of a cyber crime unit supported by UNICEF.

Maha Homsi, UNICEF’s chief of child protection programme, said the UN agency supported the training of Jordanian police in the UK on detecting such crimes online and a cyber crime unit has been recently established at the Family Protection Department.

The unit will take action to identify and protect victims, remove child sexual abuse material from the Internet, and strengthen cooperation to track down abusers.

“Initially, our agreement with the police was to set up a unit with six members, but after knowing the extent of the work, they commissioned 12 people,” Homsi told The Jordan Times in a recent interview, adding that UNICEF also equipped the unit with top-notch equipment for decrypting mobile phones and examining computers and social media.

Those who post any pornographic material online can now be detected, the UNICEF official explained.

According to Homsi, the Interpol plays a role in the process, and they did not grant access for Jordanian police officers to detect such abuses until after they received the required training.

“Now they have this skill and the forensic investigation skills on the mobile, they are allowed to enter cyberspace and work on these cases… The Interpol has referred to them three cases so far, and they are working on other cases,” she explained.

Some of the cases they have been working on are associated with sexual assault, involving the perpetrator raping the victim and filming the crime, according to Homsi.

In one of the cases uncovered by Interpol, she added, an IP address was identified for publishing 600 pornographic pictures.

Some of these issues have now been brought to the surface through an initiative by the Family Protection Department, the Ministry of Interior and the National Council for Family Affairs. 

The project is supported by the UK Department for International Development, according to the UNICEF official.

In addition, Homsi said UNICEF is working on an awareness campaign to help young people use the Internet wisely. 

“This will start very soon for youth… We will use social media.”

The first focus of the campaign is adolescents who are in the 15-16 age bracket, then “we will be designing other material to cover another age group because our children, unfortunately, use the Internet earlier than they are supposed to”, Homsi added.