Ministry of Interior and the National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing launched the ‘Child Digital Safety’ initiative in March 2018, in a joint effort to raise awareness among children and school students about online threats and challenges, and promote a safe and constructive use of the internet.

The initiative also familiarises parents and educators with solutions they can use to address these challenges and ensure the safety of their children and students. It includes developing educational material on digital safety, facilitating children with global best practices in that domain, and providing advice to parents and teachers to enhance digital safety for their children at home and in the learning environment.

Four sub-initiatives to enhance digital safety of children

This initiative consists of four main sub-initiatives. They are:

• Interactive Children’s Camp, where children between 5 and 18 years can learn how to use the internet and social media safely
• Digital Wellbeing Portal, which provides tools and information to help parents face the challenges of the digital world
• training workshops, where parents and teachers can be trained to address digital challenges and threats and
• a support platform to answer urgent queries from parents regarding digital safety.

Protection of children's data online

Article 29 of Federal Law No. 3 of 2016 Concerning Child Rights, also known as Wadeema's Law (PDF, 250 KB), states: The telecommunications companies and internet service providers shall notify the competent authorities or the concerned entities of any child pornography materials being circulated through the social media sites and on the Internet and shall provide necessary information and data on the persons, entities or sites that circulate such material or intend to mislead the children.

In addition, the Dubai Data Law (Law No. 26 of 2015 on the Organization of Dubai Data Publication and Sharing, PDF 250 KB) aims for data protection and privacy of all individuals including that of children. 

The Sannif initiative was launched to enable parents to learn about eGames and assess their impact on their children. 

ITU’s Child Online Protection (COP) Guidelines

ITU launched the 2020 Child Online Protection (COP) Guidelines to ensure that the rights of children are being respected when they are online. The guidelines are the product of the collaborative effort of 80 experts from different sectors including governments, international organisations, NGOs, academia and the private sector.

ITU has developed specific guidelines for:

1. children
2. parents and educators
3. industry and
4. policymakers.

In addition, ITU and its partners are in the process of launching training courses to educate everyone about children’s online safety. Discover and enrol for courses. To support the implementation of the 2020 COP Guidelines globally, ITU further launched ‘Global Programme on Child Online Protection & Online Safety with Sango for Kids’.

Read more about the UAE’s Efforts Towards Child Online Protection (PDF, 6.30MB).

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