Reem Leila attends a conference that seeks to protect children as they surf the Internet Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, founder and president of the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement (SMWIPM), inaugurated the third annual conference of the Cyber Peace Initiative (CPI) on 5 July in Cairo. During the conference, attended by local, regional and international cyber safety experts and which aims to increase public awareness of the CPI's objectives, Mrs Mubarak launched the Arab Internet Safety Portal (Amanak). The conference focussed on technological solutions to guarantee the online safety of children and addressed the threats they can face while using the Internet. Within the context of the conference a letter of intent on Child Online Safety was signed by Internet and mobile service providers. Mrs Mubarak stressed the need to increase people's awareness of the seriousness of the problem constituted by the exploitation of minors. "We will never realise sustainable peace as long as our young people are trapped in a vicious cycle of violence and abuse directed at them through the unsafe use of the Internet," she said. "Since the creation of CPI in 2007 we have vowed to exert our utmost efforts towards gathering the required resources necessary to deal with the problem effectively." Many parents worry about their children accessing sites with inappropriate content while surfing the Internet. John Carr, secretary of the UK based Children's Charities' Coalition and a leading expert on children's use of the Internet and related technologies, stresses that pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online. "In 2008, Internet Watch Foundation [IWF] found 1,536 individual child abuse domains. Child researchers who monitored the Internet over six weeks discovered more than 140,000 child pornography images posted on the Internet." Hoda Baraka, deputy minister of communications and information technology, says Egypt's efforts to protect children against the evils of misusing the Internet include the introduction of a new initiative blocking access to child pornography. "We have launched the Family Internet service, which filters undesirable websites, in response to parents seeking to protect their children," said Baraka. Similar measures have been deployed in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other countries. The service, says Baraka, is a router-based solution that blocks URLs containing sexually abusive images without affecting the Image Signal Processor (ISP) core. "During the planning phase we were looking for a solution specifically designed to make Egypt's network safe without compromising the availability and speed of companies that provide Internet services to the public." Mushira Khattab, minister of state for family and population, regrets the way Internet access has augmented the possession and dissemination of harmful and exploitive materials. "It is essential to spread greater awareness of safe Internet usage among Egypt's non-governmental organisations and civil society because they are can reach the public more easily," she says. Khattab stresses the importance of continuous interaction between children and their parents, especially when they are online. "Families must encourage their children to inform them of anything which makes them uncomfortable and encourage them in the responsible use of technology." At the end of the one-day conference Mrs Mubarak chaired a closed meeting to review work plans for the next year and assess the previous 12 months' activities.
