The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has called for stronger safeguards from digital platforms and better protection for children as online sexual abuse increasingly takes place on platforms children use every day.
In its latest report, the agency ranked WhatsApp and Facebook as the top digital sites where children are sexually abused in Kenya. WhatsApp was responsible for the largest proportion of reported incidents of online sexual abuse involving children aged 12 to 17, accounting for 53.3 percent of cases, while Facebook accounted for 51.6 percent.
These figures show that abuse is occurring on platforms that children routinely use for communication and socialising.
YouTube was involved in 15.8 percent of incidents, followed by Instagram (14.9 percent), Twitter (7.9 percent) and TikTok (seven percent).
Social media accounted for 61 percent of incidents overall, gaming for 11.6 percent, and 17.9 percent involved an in-person element.
The agency has asked technology companies to strengthen the safeguards on their platforms, including introducing privacy-by-default protections, restricting unsolicited contact from adults, making recommender systems safer and proactively detecting sexual abuse material, including AI-generated content.
The report also calls for stronger laws and enforcement measures, improved reporting and support systems, and greater support for families, schools and communities.
‘We all have a role to play in protecting children online, including governments and technology companies,’ Unicef Executive Director, Catherine Russell, said.
Although the government has developed and adopted policies and enacted laws to protect children, thousands are still exposed to violence and abuse, harmful practices, a lack of parental care, and sexual exploitation.
In Kenya, 66 percent of incidents involved someone known to the child, compared with 17 percent involving a stranger. At the same time, few children report their experiences to the relevant authorities, while less than one percent of cases involving children were reported to the police, a social worker, or a helpline.
This places greater importance on adults and child protection workers who may be the first to notice signs of abuse or receive a disclosure.
Rose Mwangi, Head of Child Online Protection at the State Department for Children’s Services, has previously emphasised the importance of a coordinated approach to protecting children from online abuse.
‘We all play a part in protecting a child. It cannot be left to one single entity; it must be multidisciplinary. We need to be proactive in preventing violations of children’s rights rather than responding to them,’ said Ms Mwangi.
She has also emphasised the need to reach children in the online spaces where they spend their time, saying that the authorities need to ‘find them in their spaces’.
The report estimates that 20 million children aged 12 to 17, or nearly one in five, experienced at least one form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse in a single year across 21 countries.
‘An estimated 20 million children aged 12 to 17- about one in five of the internet-using children in these countries-were sexually exploited or abused through digital technologies in a single year. They were targeted on the digital platforms they used every day, sometimes by someone they already knew and sometimes by someone they had first met online,’ the report read.
In Kenya, 26.83 percent of children using the internet in the same age group, approximately 1.29 million, experienced at least one form of such abuse. This figure was roughly in line with the average of 26.8 percent recorded across the six Eastern and Southern African countries covered by the study.
Ms Russell said that children in the countries studied had been subjected to unwanted explicit sexual content or exploitation online, often in spaces where they learn, play, and connect with friends.
‘Many children are suffering in silence, unsure where to turn for help,’ she said.
Unicef is calling for child protection systems to provide clearer and safer routes for children to report abuse and access support.
‘Police officers, teachers, social workers and judges require training, resources and coordination to enable them to respond in a child-centred, trauma-informed and effective manner,’ it said.
TikTok said it has introduced safeguards for minors, including restricting certain features for younger users and making accounts for those under 18 private by default. The company also said it uses technology to detect potentially predatory behaviour.