Protecting Children In Cyberspace: An Interdisciplinary Study Of Online Child Sexual Exploitation
- IJLLR Journal
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Anjali, Department of Law, Maharishi Markandeshwar (Deemed to be University), Mullana, Ambala, Haryana, India
Akanksha, Department of Law, M.M.H. College, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
ABSTRACT
The suddenly growing digital technologies have had a major effect on the way children obtain access to education, communication and socialization and at the same time have afflicted them with unfamiliar digitally based forms of abuse and exploitation. Online Child Sexual Exploitation (OCSE) has become a significant international issue, including: online grooming, Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), sextortion, live-streamed sexual abuse and technology-enabled exploitation. The growing number of social media, online gaming sites, encrypted communications and artificial intelligence has made these crimes even harder to deal with and a major problem for law enforcement agencies and even policymakers.
This paper will take an interdisciplinary perspective in the analysis of the legal, technological, and policy aspects of child sexual exploitation in the online space in India. It examines the constitutional provisions and law enforcement, such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. The position of the recent technology in facilitating as well as combating online exploitation is also an issue of discussion in the study, which outlines the significance of the digital forensics, artificial intelligence, platform responsibility, and international collaboration.
The paper has highlighted some of these obstacles as technological anonymity, encrypted communication, transnational cybercrime, under- reporting offenses, poor digital literacy, and poor institutional coordination. It proposes that legal provisions cannot be alone to take care of the dynamic nature of online child sexual exploitation. A multi-strategy of robust legal enforcement, innovative technology, education on cyber safety, institutional capacity building, support services to victims, and cooperation between governments, technological businesses, academic institutions, civil society organisations and international agencies are essential towards effective child
protection.
It ends by concluding that cybercrime needs the involvement of children in order to protect them in cyberspace by adopting a child-centred and multidisciplinary framework of governance that involves law, technology, public policy and education to guarantee the safety, dignity, privacy and general well-being of children in the digital age.
Keywords: Online Child Sexual Exploitation, Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Cyber Law, Child Protection, Digital Safety.
