In framework of permanent cooperation with UN bodies our Association sent submission to UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children Ms. Mama Fatima Singhateh for her report to the General Assembly on the existing and emerging threats that digital technologies pose to children and the role that digital technology can play in responding to the diverse manifestations of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children online.
Earlier we informed UN Special Rapporteur that criminal groups, including ethic-grounded criminal entities involved in the child sexual abuse and child trafficking in the Crimea, operate in Yalta, Alushta and other peninsula areas with close connection with “Crimean republican authorities”.
New ARC’s submission, prepared by Professor Borys Babin and published now at UN web-sources, pointed, that local sources informed us about sexual exploitation in Crimea and in Russia of Ukrainian children, deported illegally from the Ukrainian mainland after 2022. The participation of the Crimean organised criminal groups in sexual exploitation of youth, including digital environment, poses additional challenges to the identification of victims, as there are no effective remedies in the occupied peninsula as a “grey zone”, ARC’s submission stressed.
Local sources informed about sexual exploitation of such children by “administration” of so-called “youth camps”, and a lot of propaganda media content was made by aggressor’s “authorities” with those children, including digital environment. Also ARC’s submission stressed on relevant risks, connected with digital environment and artificial intelligence, in Crimean aggressor-controlled “educational institutions”.
Special challenges appeared on the issue of artificial intelligence, regarding youth sexual exploitation in the digital environment, ARC’s submission resumed. It pointed to UN Special Rapporteur, that our Association’s experts, including Andrii Chvaliuk and Olesya Tsybulko, initiated discussion already in UN bodies on issues artificial intelligence challenges, especially in areas of human rights violation, countering hate speech, fakes dissemination, autocracy and war crimes in interstate conflict zones, regarding aggressor’s relevant illegal activities in the occupied Crimea.
So ARC’s experts pointed the proposals to the UN Rapporteur for combating the phenomena of child sexual exploitation and abuse in digital environment, including duty to research issues of legal subjectivity and responsibility of artificial intelligence, involved into child sexual exploitation and abuse in digital environment also as of its creators and coordinators.
Also, regarding conditions on hostilities and interstate conflict demands of Rome Statute, Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols must be taken in account regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against children, used in child sexual exploitation and abuse in digital environments, ARC’s submission stressed on Crimean examples.
