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Monitor Czech Republic

What is the status of digital children’s rights?

In this Digital Child Rights Monitor we give insight how the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) addressed digital child rights in its 2021 Concluding Observations on Czech Republic. The priority scale reflects how strongly the CRC highlights an issue in its recommendations — the higher the score, the bigger or more pressing the problem. This scale helps visualize which digital child rights issues the CRC considers most urgent and where Czech Republic faces its greatest challenges. If a country gets a low priority score it does not necessarily mean the country is doing good, it just means the CRC made little to no mention to it.

Summary

Priority

Infrastructure & Capacity (12) and Digital Access & Participation (12) fall into the high-urgency category. These consistently high scores indicate major structural and access-related challenges, showing that children lack sufficient infrastructure, connectivity, and opportunities to participate fully in the digital environment.

Priority

Online Safety & Protection (6) and Violence & Exploitation Online (5) both fall into the medium-urgency range. These scores indicate notable but not extreme concern, suggesting that risks such as exposure to harmful content, online harassment, and digital exploitation require strengthened safeguards and monitoring.

Priority

Privacy & Data Protection and Digital Health & Well-Being fall into the low-urgency category, as they do not appear in the dataset for this reporting cycle. Their absence likely reflects limited Committee attention to these topics at the time, rather than a lack of relevance. Still, these themes remain important in the broader digital rights landscape and should be monitored, especially given increasing data-driven technologies and the growing impact of digital environments on children’s mental health. It is however important to mention that the General Comment No.25 was only applicable from 2021, which could explain the lack of data. 

Overview themes

  1. Digital Access & Participation
  2. Digital Health & Wellbeing
  3. Infrastructure & Capacity
  4. Online safety & Protection
  5. Privacy & Data Protection
  6. Violence & Exploitation Online

The data shows that the Committee’s strongest focus is on Digital Access & Participation and Infrastructure & Capacity, both of which appear frequently and with high urgency. Online Safety & Protection and Violence & Exploitation Online are also addressed but at a medium urgency level, indicating notable yet less critical concerns. In contrast, Privacy & Data Protection and Digital Health & Well-Being are not mentioned, placing them in the low-urgency category. This absence likely reflects the timing of the report, before these themes became more prominent in global digital child-rights monitoring.

Infrastructure & Capacity

  1. Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws
  2. Digitalized systems
  3. Training of professionals on online offences 

The data shows that Digitalized systems receive the highest urgency score, indicating that systemic digital infrastructure and modernization are significant concerns. Training of professionals on online offences follows with a moderate urgency level, suggesting that capacity-building for law enforcement and relevant actors is also a notable priority. Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws receive the lowest urgency among the three themes, reflecting comparatively less emphasis on legal or regulatory updates in this area. Overall, the focus is primarily on strengthening digital systems and professional preparedness rather than large-scale legal reform.

Digital Access & Participation

  1. Access for children with disabilities
  2. Civic participation via digital means
  3. Digital divide
  4. E-learning
  5. IT infrastructure

The data shows that E-learning receives the highest urgency, suggesting it is the most prominent digital issue highlighted by the Committee. Civic participation via digital means, Digital divide, Access for children with disabilities,  and IT infrastructure all hold a moderate urgency level, indicating consistent but less critical attention. Meanwhile, Access for children with disabilities is assigned no urgency, reflecting a lack of Committee focus on this topic within the digital context. Overall, the emphasis is primarily on strengthening digital education systems while other structural and accessibility issues receive comparatively limited attention.

Digital Health & Wellbeing

Digital Health and Wellbeing shows no recorded urgency in the available data. This absence may indicate that the theme was not addressed directly in the reviewed Concluding Observations. It is also possible that digital wellbeing issues were emerging at the time and therefore not yet consistently recognised by monitoring bodies. As a result, the lack of data does not necessarily reflect low importance, but rather a gap in reporting or thematic development.

Online Safety & Protection

All three themes; awareness campaigns, complaint and reporting mechanisms, and safeguarding policies in digital media, receive an equal urgency score of 2, indicating a balanced distribution of attention across these areas. This suggests that each sub-theme is considered moderately important, with no single issue emerging as a dominant priority. Overall, the data reflects a consistent medium-level focus on strengthening child protection structures and public awareness within the digital environment.

Privacy and data protection

Privacy and Data Protection also has no urgency scores recorded in the dataset. This may be due to limited explicit references to children’s digital privacy in earlier reporting cycles. Since digital privacy concerns have grown significantly in recent years, their absence likely reflects the period in which the data was written rather than the relevance of the issue. Consequently, the lack of data suggests a reporting gap rather than a lack of risk or concern for children’s privacy.

Violence & Exploitation Online

The data shows that online sexual exploitation and CSAM is the only sub-theme with any recorded urgency, reaching a total of 5. All other sub-themes, including gender-based violence, online harassment and trafficking and exploitation, have a total urgency score of 0. This indicates that urgency in the dataset is concentrated entirely in the area of online sexual exploitation.

Concluding Observations CRC

  1. “While welcoming the establishment of the online complaint portal,10 the Committee is seriously concerned about the following…”
  2. “Implement the measures necessary to enhance awareness of child sexual abuse and exploitation among both the members of public and professionals working with and for children and respond to all manifestations of child sexual exploitation and abuse, in particular online and in travel and tourism, including by strengthening the professional capacity and software tools to detect and investigate such abuse, promoting training for parents and teachers about risks online and the risks associated with sexting, ensuring and promoting accessible, confidential, child-friendly and effective channels for reporting all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse and encouraging children to make use thereof;…”
  3. “With reference to its general comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, the Committee recommends that the State party strengthen its efforts to protect children from negative and harmful media and digital content and to decrease disinformation and fake news campaigns, including regarding coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccinations.”
  4. “Establish and apply a national standardized education curriculum, giving particular attention to digital skills, supply an adequate number of qualified and adequately remunerated teachers, strengthen teacher training in information and communications technology skills and improve digital equipment in schools;…”
  5. “Strengthen the collection of disaggregated data on the staffing of health-care facilities in urban and rural areas, drug prescriptions issued to children and health interventions. “
  6. “Establish an adequately resourced social housing system, systematically collect and analyse data on families in need of social housing and secure the necessary housing stock;…”
  7. “Systematically collect and analyse data on the situation of Roma children in all areas covered by the Convention, with due respect for the principles of confidentiality, voluntary self-identification and informed consent, to inform its policies and programmes.”
  8. “Address inequalities generated by the COVID-19 crisis during home schooling, including by ensuring the availability of computer equipment and sufficient Internet access, giving particular attention to children in rural areas and children with disabilities.”
  9. “The Committee is seriously concerned about the following: The growing number of cases of girls and boys exploited in prostitution and in the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, with victims as young as 3 years of age;…”

Czech Republic
2021

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