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Monitor Ethiopia

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 2026 Concluding Observations on Ethiopia. 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 Ethiopia faces its greatest challenges. If a country gets a low urgency score it does not necessarily mean the country is doing good, it just means the CRC made little to no mention to it.

Summary

High priority

Infrastructure & Capacity (17) emerges as the most pressing priority, driven by high scores for digitalized systems and cybercrime and cybersecurity laws. Violence & Exploitation Online (12) also stands out as a high-priority area, with concerns spanning multiple forms of online harm, indicating significant risks to children in digital environments.

Medium priority

Infrastructure & Capacity (17) emerges as the most pressing priority, driven by high scores for digitalized systems and cybercrime and cybersecurity laws. Violence & Exploitation Online (12) also stands out as a high-priority area, with concerns spanning multiple forms of online harm, indicating significant risks to children in digital environments.

Low priortity

Privacy & Data Protection (2) receives limited attention, focused only on artificial intelligence (AI). Digital Health & Well-being (0) is not addressed at all, indicating a lack of attention to mental health and wellbeing in digital contexts.

Overview themes

  1. Digital Access & Participation
  2. Digital Health & Well-Being
  3. Infrastructure & Capacity
  4. Online Safety & Protection
  5. Privacy & Data Protection
  6. Violence & Exploitation Online

Infrastructure & Capacity dominates the landscape, reflecting significant gaps in digital systems and regulatory frameworks. Violence & Exploitation Online also receives strong attention, highlighting a wide range of risks including harassment, exploitation, and trafficking. Digital Access & Participation and Online Safety & Protection show moderate but evenly distributed attention across several subthemes. In contrast, Privacy & Data Protection and Digital Health & Well-being remain underdeveloped or absent, indicating important gaps in children’s digital rights.

Violence and exploitation

  1. Discriminatory Violence
  2. Online Harrasment and Bullying
  3. Online sexual exploitation / CSAM
  4. Trafficking / exploitation through digital platforms

Violence & Exploitation Online is a high-priority theme (12), with equal attention across discriminatory violence, online harassment, online sexual exploitation (CSAM), and trafficking and exploitation. This broad coverage highlights a wide range of risks faced by children. The even distribution suggests recognition of multiple forms of harm, all requiring sustained attention.

Infrastructure and capacity

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

Infrastructure & Capacity is the most prominent theme (17), with strong emphasis on digitalized systems and cybercrime and cybersecurity laws. This indicates substantial gaps in both technical infrastructure and legal frameworks. The absence of attention to training of professionals suggests limited focus on capacity-building efforts.

Digital health and wellbeing

Digital Health & Well-being is not addressed in the data (0), with no references to mental health, screen time, or support services. This absence indicates that the impact of digital environments on children’s wellbeing is not currently prioritised. It points to a significant gap in both awareness and policy focus.

Online safety and protection

Online Safety & Protection shows moderate priority (5), with attention given to complaint and reporting mechanisms and safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media. This indicates some development of protective frameworks. However, the absence of awareness campaigns suggests limited emphasis on prevention.

Privacy and data protection

Privacy & Data Protection receives limited attention (2), focused solely on artificial intelligence (AI). Other key areas, such as children’s privacy rights, data protection practices, and surveillance, are not addressed. This suggests a narrow and incomplete approach to data governance.

Digital access and participation

Digital Access & Participation receives moderate attention (5), with equal emphasis across children with disabilities, civic participation via digital means, digital divide, e-learning, and IT infrastructure. This even distribution suggests a broad recognition of access-related challenges. However, the relatively low scores indicate that these issues are not yet strongly prioritised.

Concluding Observations CRC

  1. “Continue to improve digital inclusion for children in disadvantaged situations, such as children in remote areas, refugee and internally displaced children and children with disabilities, including by means of accessible and affordable online services and connectivity and by providing schools with affordable devices;”
  2. “Adequately protect children from harmful content and materials and online risks, and provide for mechanisms to prosecute violations.”
  3. “The high prevalence of violence against children, including domestic violence, abuse, neglect, sexual and gender-based violence, bullying and online sexual exploitation and abuse;.”
  4. “The Committee notes the steps taken to ensure the rights of all child victims and witnesses and recommends that the State Party put in place child-sensitive mechanisms to facilitate and promote the reporting of cases and ensure that complaint mechanisms are child-friendly and available both online and offline, paying particular attention to children with disabilities, girls, children in alternative care settings, children in detention facilities and refugee and internally displaced children, and ensure that child victims and witnesses of crimes are interviewed without delay by trained forensic professionals in child-friendly facilities, avoiding revictimization resulting from repetitive interviews.”
  5. “Recalling its general comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment and the 2026 joint statement of the Committee and other signing parties on artificial intelligence and the rights of the child, the Committee recommends that the State Party:”
  6. “Expeditiously improve its data-collection system, particularly at the federal and regional levels, and ensure that data collected on children’s rights cover all areas of the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto in order to facilitate analysis of the situation of children, particularly those in situations of particular vulnerability;”
  7. “To strengthen interoperability between civil registration systems and health services to improve data management and service provision, ensuring prompt and accurate birth registration;”
  8. “To strengthen interoperability between civil registration systems and health services to improve data management and service provision, ensuring prompt and accurate birth registration;”

Ethiopia
2026

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