INTERPOL’S INTERNATIONAL CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

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Context:

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has joined the Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) initiative that will allow it to collaborate with investigators in other countries for detecting child sex abuse online and identifying abusers, victims, and crime scenes from audio-visual clips using specialised software.
India is the 68th country to have access to this database and software

What is Interpol?

Interpol is the world’s largest international police organisation with 195 member countries, and is headquartered in Lyon, France.
Each member country hosts an Interpol National Central Bureau that connects their national law enforcement to it and in India, the CBI is that nodal agency.

The ICSE database uses video and image comparison to analyse Child Sex Exploitation Material (CSEM) and make connections between victims, abusers and places.
As of July 2022, over 30,000 victims of child abuse and over 13,000 criminals have been identified by the Interpol using this database and software.
The database avoids duplication of effort and saves precious time by letting investigators know whether a series of images has already been discovered or identified in another country, or whether it has similar features to other images.

India reported over 24 lakh instances of online child sexual abuse from 2017 to 2020, with 80% victims being girls below the age of 14 years, according to Interpol data.
More than 60% unidentified victims were prepubescent, including infants and toddlers.
Around 65% of unidentified victims were girls, but severe abuse images were more likely to have boys
In 2019, the CBI set up a special unit called the ‘Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention/Investigation (OCSAE)’, for tracking and monitoring posting, circulation and downloads of CSEM online.
Based on intelligence developed by the unit, the CBI started a country-wide operation against the alleged peddlers of online CSEM in India last year
Back in 2020, the cyber wing of the Maharashtra Police had acquired a software from Interpol to track child sex abuse captured on video and in photos.
In 2019, the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, a US-based non-profit organisation, had started sharing tip-offs about child sex abuse with Indian agencies. Received by the National Crime Records Bureau, this information was passed on to the states where the incidents took place, to boost detection of those sharing such content.