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 2024 Concluding Observations on Mali. 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 Mali 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
Online Safety & Protection (4) emerges as the most prominent priority, with equal emphasis on awareness campaigns on safe internet use and complaint and reporting mechanisms. This indicates a focus on both preventive and responsive measures to address online risks.
Violence & Exploitation Online also appears as a high-priority concern (6), signalling persistent risks such as online abuse, exploitation, or unsafe digital environments for children.
Medium priority
Infrastructure & Capacity (3) receives moderate attention, driven solely by digitalized systems, suggesting ongoing challenges in developing core digital infrastructure. Digital Access & Participation (2) also shows moderate priority, with attention limited to IT infrastructure, indicating basic access concerns.
Low priority
Privacy & Data Protection (0), Violence & Exploitation Online (0), and Digital Health & Well-being (0) are not addressed in the data. This absence suggests limited visibility and prioritisation of data rights, online harms, and wellbeing-related issues.
Overview themes
- Digital Access & Participation
- Digital Health & Well-Being
- Infrastructure & Capacity
- Online Safety & Protection
- Privacy & Data Protection
- Violence & Exploitation Online
Online Safety & Protection stands out as the leading theme, reflecting a focus on awareness and reporting mechanisms. Infrastructure & Capacity and Digital Access & Participation receive moderate attention, highlighting foundational challenges in systems and access. However, the scope within these themes remains narrow, with limited subthemes addressed. In contrast, Privacy & Data Protection, Violence & Exploitation Online, and Digital Health & Well-being are entirely absent, indicating significant gaps in coverage.
Online Safety and protection
- Awareness campaigns on safe internet use
- Complaint & Reporting mechanisms
- Safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media
Online Safety & Protection is the most prominent theme (4), with equal focus on awareness campaigns and complaint and reporting mechanisms. This indicates a balanced approach between prevention and response. However, the absence of safeguarding policies suggests incomplete protection frameworks.
Infrastructure and capacity
- Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws
- Digitalized systems
- Training of professionals on online offences
Infrastructure & Capacity shows moderate priority (3), driven entirely by digitalized systems. This highlights the importance of developing core digital infrastructure. However, the absence of cybercrime laws and professional training suggests limited attention to regulatory and capacity-building aspects.
Digital health and wellbeing
Digital Health & Well-being is not addressed (0), with no references to mental health, screen time, or support services. This indicates that the impact of digital environments on children’s wellbeing is not considered. It highlights a significant gap in awareness and policy focus.
Violence and exploitation
Violence & Exploitation Online is not addressed (0), with no mention of risks such as exploitation, harassment, or trafficking. This absence suggests that online harms are not captured in the available data. It likely reflects gaps in assessment rather than a lack of underlying issues.
Privacy and data protection
Privacy & Data Protection is not addressed (0), with no references to data protection, privacy rights, or surveillance. This suggests limited visibility into how children’s data is handled. The absence points to gaps in both policy attention and reporting.
Digital access and participation
Digital Access & Participation receives limited attention (2), focused solely on IT infrastructure. This suggests basic challenges in ensuring access to digital environments. Other areas, such as digital divide, e-learning, and inclusion, are not addressed, indicating gaps in broader participation.
Concluding Observations CRC
- “Raise awareness and widely disseminate information about existing mechanisms for reporting violations, violence and abuse, including the child helpline and the portal for reporting online violence, and provide sustainable funding for such services to ensure that they are accessible, confidential, child-friendly and effective;”
- “To adopt without delay the national strategy for modernizing the civil registry and accelerate the introduction of a digital civil registry system to facilitate birth registration procedures;”
- “Expeditiously improve its data collection system at the national level and ensure that data collected on children’s rights covers all areas of the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto, with data disaggregated by age, sex, disability, geographical location, ethnic and national origin and socioeconomic background, in order to facilitate analysis of the situation of children, in particular those in situations of vulnerability, including by continuing to use the multiple indicator cluster survey;”
Mali
2024
Digital Child Rights Network
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