Hanoi (VNA) - The Ministry of Information and Communications, incollaboration with UNICEF, organised a conference to gather ideas on a projectto protect and support children in cyberspace during the 2020-2025 period, tobe submitted to the Prime Minister in June for approval.
Vietnam iscurrently home to more than 24 million children aged under 16. They are thefirst generation to grow up accessing information on the internet and are alsoaffected strongly by technology and negative issues.
Deputy Minister ofInformation and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung said the Party and Statealways consider protecting and caring for children as one of the basic contentsof the Human Development Strategy.
Local laws such asthe 2016 Children’s Law, the 2016 Access to Information Law, the 2018Information Security Law, and the 2018 Cyber Security Law all have contents onchild protection.
However, Hung said,there are still too few mechanisms to safeguard children in cyberspace, as theymay easily be subjected to cyber bullying, grooming, fraud, attacks, and evensexual abuse.
Proposing measuresto protect children on the internet, Hoang Minh Tien, Deputy Head of the Ministry’sDepartment of Information Security, spoke of five basic factors: the legal framework;effective measures to educate children; the use of technology to supportchildren; increasing society’s capacity for internet use; and intensifyinginternational cooperation to resolve children-related issues.
Other participantscontributed ideas to improving law enforcement as well as inter-sectoralcoordination mechanisms on child protection in cyberspace.
They stressed theneed to attract more Vietnamese businesses, especially those operating intechnology, to develop products and services to protect and support children onthe internet./.