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 2025 Concluding Observations on Slovakia. 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 Slovakia 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 (17) emerges as the most pressing digital child rights concern in Slovakia, indicating significant gaps in system readiness, institutional capacity, and digital infrastructure.
Online Safety & Protection (14) also scores high, reflecting persistent concerns around safeguarding children in digital environments and the effectiveness of preventive and protective measures.
Priority
Violence & Exploitation Online (5) and Digital Access & Participation (6) receive moderate attention, suggesting that while risks related to online harm and unequal access are recognised, they are not framed as the most urgent priorities.
Privacy & Data Protection (4) also falls into this category, pointing to acknowledged but not dominant concerns around children’s personal data and digital privacy.
Priority
Digital Health & Well-Being does not emerge as a distinct high-priority theme, indicating limited emphasis on issues such as screen time, online addiction, and broader mental health impacts in the digital context.
Overview themes
- Digital Access & Participation
- Digital Health & Well-Being
- Infrastructure & Capacity
- Online Safety & Protection
- Privacy & Data Protection
- Violence & Exploitation Online
Slovakia’s digital child rights landscape is dominated by concerns related to infrastructure and capacity, highlighting structural and institutional challenges in supporting children’s rights in digital environments. Online safety and protection also feature prominently, reflecting ongoing attention to safeguarding children from online risks and harmful content. Issues related to digital access, participation, violence and exploitation online, and privacy receive moderate emphasis, suggesting recognition of these areas without treating them as urgent priorities. In contrast, digital health and well-being is largely absent from the data, indicating that the mental health implications of digital use for children receive comparatively limited attention.
Infrastructure and capacity
- Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws
- Digitalized systems
- Training of professionals on online offences
Digital infrastructure and system digitalisation emerge as the most prominent issues, highlighting the importance placed on developing and modernising digital systems across institutions. Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws receive consistent attention, indicating a focus on strengthening legal frameworks to address online offences affecting children. Training of professionals, including the enforcement capacity of law enforcement and the judiciary, is addressed to a moderate extent, suggesting that implementation and practical expertise remain areas for improvement. Overall, the findings point to a systems- and enforcement-oriented approach, with comparatively less emphasis on preventive or child-centred digital safeguards.
Online safety and protection
- Awareness campaigns on safe internet use
- Complaint & Reporting mechanisms
- Safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media
Safeguarding measures in the digital environment receive consistent attention, with safeguarding policies in digital media emerging as the most prominent area. Awareness campaigns on safe internet use are also regularly highlighted, indicating an emphasis on prevention and education for children and caregivers. Complaint and reporting mechanisms are addressed to a similar degree, suggesting recognition of the need for accessible remedies when children’s digital rights are violated. Overall, the findings point to a balanced approach that combines preventive awareness, institutional safeguards, and accountability mechanisms, rather than a focus on a single intervention type.
Digital health and wellbeing
Digital Health and Well-Being does not receive any urgency score in the Concluding Observations, indicating that the Committee did not explicitly raise concerns in this area. This absence may suggest that issues such as screen time, online addiction, and mental health impacts were either not prioritised or not sufficiently addressed in the reporting cycle. It also highlights a potential gap in attention to children’s mental and physical well-being in the digital environment, particularly in light of the growing relevance of these issues.
Violence and exploitation
Violence and exploitation online receive a limited but notable level of attention, with concerns primarily focused on online sexual exploitation and abuse (CSAM). Other forms of online violence, such as harassment, discriminatory violence, and trafficking through digital platforms, are largely absent from the observations. This suggests a narrow focus on the most severe manifestations of harm, while broader patterns of online violence affecting children may remain under-addressed.
Privacy and data protection
Privacy, data protection, and emerging digital governance issues receive minimal attention, with limited references to children’s digital privacy rights and extraterritorial jurisdiction. Data protection, surveillance, profiling, and artificial intelligence are not substantively addressed in the observations. This lack of emphasis suggests that rapidly evolving digital risks to children’s privacy and autonomy remain insufficiently reflected in the reporting cycle.
Digital access and participation
Digital Access and Participation receives a low urgency score, with only limited references to civic participation through digital means. Key issues such as access for children with disabilities, the digital divide, e-learning, and inclusive digital infrastructure are not substantively addressed. This indicates that structural inequalities in access and meaningful participation online are not a central focus in the Committee’s assessment.
Concluding Observations CRC
- “Ensure that laws on access to information and the digital environment protect children from harmful content and materials and online risks, and provide for mechanisms to prosecute violations;”
- “Respond to all manifestations of child sexual exploitation and abuse, in particular online, 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.”
- “While noting the efforts made by the State party, in particular the adoption of the action plans for the National Strategy for Protection of Children in the Digital Environment (2022–2023 and 2024–2025), and recalling its general comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, the Committee recommends that the State party:”
- “Strengthen the implementation of regulations, including Act No. 264/2022 Coll. on Media Services, and of safeguarding policies for the media and in the digital environment to protect the privacy of children;”
- “Address digital inequalities and ensure equal access to digital technologies, especially the Internet and computers, to all children, in particular children from Roma communities.”
- “Establish a national database on all cases of violence against children, including domestic violence, abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and exploitation, and undertake a comprehensive assessment of the extent, causes and nature of such violence;”
- “Expeditiously improve its data-collection system 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, particularly those in situations of vulnerability;”
- “Ensure that statistical data and indicators on children’s rights are shared among the ministries concerned and used for the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects for the effective implementation of the Convention.”
- “There is a lack of data on children with disabilities who were reunited with their families or entered adoption or permanent family-based substitute care placements.”
- “”Organize the collection of disaggregated data on children with disabilities;”
- “Collect disaggregated data identifying the types of risk faced by children of the occurrence of a variety of disasters, in order to formulate …”
- Elaborate safeguards with a view to ensuring the rights of children in the use of artificial intelligence;”
- “The Committee regrets the insufficient information on the implementation of its concluding observations on the report of the State party submitted under article 12 of the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.”
- “… the Committee recommends… Raise awareness among children of their right to file a complaint under the existing mechanisms, and provide access to tools and services to file a complaint, such as access to the Internet or interpretation services;”
- “Raise awareness among children of their right to file a complaint under the existing mechanisms, and provide access to tools and services to file a complaint, such as access to the Internet or interpretation services;”
Slovakia
2025
Digital Child Rights Network
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