Minister brief: Online safety

An estimated 300 million children are affected by technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) each year. Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is being produced and distributed at unprecedented scale. Grooming is happening on platforms children use every day. Cross-border exploitation makes national responses insufficient on their own. Yet the 2026 Out of the Shadows Index (OOSI) reveals that most countries have not built the legislative, institutional, or coordination frameworks needed to protect children online.

What is online child sexual exploitation and abuse?

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) encompasses a range of technology-facilitated harms against children and adolescents. These harms are often interconnected with one another and with sexual violence that happens in-person. 

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM): The production, distribution, possession, or viewing of images or videos depicting the sexual abuse of a child, including technology-facilitated or AI-generated material. Every image represents a real act of harm, and its circulation constitutes ongoing re-victimization.
• Online grooming: A deliberate process through which an adult uses digital platforms to build trust, emotional connection, or a sense of obligation with a child for sexual purposes. It may involve befriending, flattering, or gift-giving; gradually desensitizing the child to sexual content; encouraging secrecy; and exploiting the relationship for sexual communication, image sharing, or in-person contact. Grooming can take place over weeks or months, is designed to make the child feel complicit, and can occur on any platform a child uses — social media, messaging apps, gaming platforms, or livestreaming services.
• Livestreamed abuse: Real-time sexual abuse of a child, broadcast to remote viewers who may direct or pay for the abuse. It is often cross-border in nature.
• Sexual extortion: The use of sexual images or information to coerce, blackmail, or extort a child or adolescent, often for further images, money, or compliance.
• Image-based sexual abuse and exploitation: The distribution of sexual images of a child or adolescent, including images initially shared voluntarily within a trusted relationship.
• Sexual solicitation and harassment: Unwanted sexual communication directed at a child or adolescent through digital platforms. 

Governments have proven they can act, yet the response is incomplete

The Index reveals a striking contradiction. On criminalization of CSAM, governments have acted decisively: all countries have criminalized CSAM to some extent. More than two-thirds of countries have a legal framework that clearly defines and fully bans CSAM, including technology-facilitated CSAM and possession with or without a plan to share it. Fifteen countries have CSAM legislation, but need to add specificity to ensure all children are protected and perpetrators can be held accountable. No country scored 0/100. This shows that when political will exists, near-universal legislative coverage is achievable. But the response to harm stops there. On online grooming, one in three countries has no legislation at all. On internet service provider (ISP) reporting of suspected CSAM, nearly two-thirds of countries impose no requirement. Only 1 of the 60 countries assessed by the Index — the Philippines — received a full score for laws against online sexual violence against children.