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 Tunisia. 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 Tunisia 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 (13) emerges as the most pressing priority, driven primarily by digitalized systems, alongside attention to cybercrime and cybersecurity laws and training of professionals. This highlights significant gaps in both digital infrastructure and institutional capacity.
Medium priority
Online Safety & Protection (5) receives moderate attention, with a focus on safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media, and more limited attention to awareness campaigns on safe internet use. This suggests that protective frameworks are developing but remain incomplete.
Low priority
Privacy & Data Protection (2) receives limited attention, focusing only on children’s digital privacy rights. Digital Access & Participation (0), Violence & Exploitation Online (0), and Digital Health & Well-being (0) are not addressed, indicating significant gaps in these areas.
Overview themes
- Digital Access & Participation
- Digital Health & Well-Being
- Infrastructure & Capacity
- Online Safety & Protection
- Privacy & Data Protection
- Violence & Exploitation Online
The Committee’s strongest concerns focus on Infrastructure & Capacity and Violence & Exploitation Online, while areas like Online Safety & Protection and Health & Well-Being receive minimal attention.
Online Safety and Protection
- Awareness campaigns on safe internet use
- Complaint and reporting systems
- Safeguarding polices and accountability in digital media
Online Safety & Protection shows moderate priority (5), with attention focused on safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media, and limited mention of awareness campaigns. This indicates some recognition of protective frameworks. However, the absence of complaint and reporting mechanisms suggests gaps in response systems.
Infrastructure and capacity
- Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws
- Digitalized systems
- Training of professionals on online offences
Infrastructure & Capacity is the most prominent theme (13), with strong emphasis on digitalized systems, followed by cybercrime and cybersecurity laws and training of professionals. This suggests that strengthening both technical infrastructure and institutional capacity is a key priority. The distribution indicates that system development is the primary concern.
Digital health and wellbeing
The data shows that mental health impacts are the only subtheme given any urgency, with a low score of 1. No concerns were raised about gaming or online addiction, even though this is an important topic in digital wellbeing. Support and rehabilitation services were also not mentioned, indicating no identified need for improvement in this area. Overall, this theme receives very limited attention in the Concluding Observations.
Online safety and protection
The data shows a very low level of concern in the Online Safety & Protection theme, with only one urgent mention related to awareness campaigns on safe internet use. Safeguarding policies and complaint mechanisms received no urgency scores, indicating that these issues were not raised as priority areas in the assessed Concluding Observations.
Privacy and data protection
The data indicates that data protection, surveillance and profiling is the only area identified with notable urgency, receiving the highest score. All other subthemes, including Artificial Intelligence, Children’s Digital Privacy Rights, and Extraterritorial jurisdiction for online crimes, were not flagged for concern, suggesting minimal attention or no issues raised in these areas.
Digital access and participation
The data shows that E-learning is the most urgent issue within this theme, receiving the highest score compared to all other subthemes. Digital divide and IT infrastructure receive only minimal concern, while access for children with disabilities and civic participation via digital means are not mentioned at all, suggesting no identified issues in those areas.
Concluding Observations CRC
- “Ensure that draft laws on access to information and the digital environment, including the bill on the electronic communications code, adequately protect children from harmful content and materials and online risks, and provide for mechanisms to prosecute violations.”
- “Develop regulations and safeguarding policies for the media and in the digital environment to protect the privacy of children;”
- “The Committee commends the State party for its efforts to collect and analyse data on the situation of children, including the launch of the ChildInfo database and in the context of its first review under the voluntary national review process of the high-level political forum for sustainable development. Recalling its previous recommendations, the Committee recommends that the State party:”
- “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, including in the areas of health, education, violence, child labour, trafficking and child justice”
- Continue its technical cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), among other entities, to strengthen its data collection and management system, including by allocating sufficient resources for the implementation of the multiple indicator cluster surveys throughout the country.”
- “Expedite the establishment of the independent human rights commission and ensure that it is able to monitor children’s rights and to receive, investigate and address complaints from children in a child-friendly manner;”
- “Adopt a comprehensive awareness-raising strategy, in cooperation with civil society organizations and through greater media and social media engagement, aimed at ensuring that the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto are widely known by children, parents and the general public, in particular targeting parents, caregivers, religious leaders and children in rural areas, and implement the strategy in a child-friendly manner;”
- “Ensure that all professionals working with and for children, including civil servants, law enforcement officials, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, teachers, social workers and health-care personnel, as well as members of the media, receive mandatory training on children’s rights.”
Tunisia
2021
Digital Child Rights Network
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