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Monitor Zambia

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 2022 Concluding Observations on Zambia. 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 Zambia 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 (8) emerges as one of Zambia’s most urgent concerns, reflecting major gaps in connectivity, digital readiness, and institutional capability. The CRC’s emphasis suggests that system-level shortcomings such as limited broadband, inadequate school infrastructure, or low professional capacity, are significantly hindering children’s digital rights and opportunities. Strengthening national infrastructure is therefore essential for safe and equitable participation.

Violence & Exploitation Online (8) is equally high urgency, indicating persistent risks of online grooming, abuse, sexual exploitation, and harmful interactions. The high score shows that children in Zambia face substantial exposure to exploitation-related threats without sufficient safeguards. Stronger protection systems, cross-border cooperation, and digital law-enforcement measures are critical.

Priority

Online Safety & Protection (3) shows a moderate level of urgency, suggesting that Zambia has begun addressing digital safety but still falls short of providing holistic protection. Preventive education, platform accountability, and child-friendly reporting mechanisms remain underdeveloped. As a result, children remain vulnerable to everyday online harms despite partial progress.

Priority

Digital Access & Participation (0) gets no mention. The lack of recorded urgency suggests limited attention to children’s digital inclusion and participation rights in current reporting.

Digital Health & Well-Being (0) also gets no mention. Issues like screen time, gaming, and online well-being appear under-addressed and are not reflected in the available data.

Privacy & Data Protection (0) again gets no mention. Children’s data rights receive little visibility, indicating a gap in monitoring safeguards for personal information and online privacy.

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

Zambia’s digital child-rights landscape is dominated by Infrastructure & Capacity and Violence & Exploitation Online, both of which receive the highest urgency scores and highlight critical gaps in system readiness and child protection. Online Safety & Protection emerges as a medium-level concern, indicating that although some measures exist, children still face notable everyday online risks. In contrast, Digital Access & Participation, Digital Health & Well-Being, and Privacy & Data Protection receive no urgency scoring, suggesting these areas are not yet meaningfully addressed in national reporting. Overall, the data shows a system focused on immediate safety and structural issues, while broader digital rights remain largely overlooked.

Violence and exploitation

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

The data shows that online sexual exploitation and CSAM carries the highest urgency score (5), indicating it is the most pressing digital protection concern in this context. Discriminatory violence also appears with significant urgency (3), suggesting notable risks of harmful or hate-based behaviour affecting children online. Online harassment and trafficking/exploitation receive no urgency scores, implying that these areas were either not raised by the Committee or were not considered urgent during the reporting cycle. Overall, the pattern highlights a concentrated focus on sexual exploitation risks, while other forms of online violence receive limited attention.

Infrastructure and capacity

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

The data shows that Digitalised systems carry the highest urgency, with a combined score of seven, indicating significant national challenges in modernising digital infrastructure and ensuring secure, reliable digital environments for children. Cybercrime and cybersecurity laws appear as a lower but still relevant concern, suggesting that some legal protections exist but remain insufficient to address evolving online risks. Training of professionals receives no urgency score, implying that capacity-building efforts for those working with children in digital contexts are either unaddressed or not prioritised in reporting. Overall, the results highlight a system focused primarily on digital infrastructure issues, while human capacity development and legal strengthening lag behind.

Digital health and wellbeing

Digital health and wellbeing receive no recorded urgency score, suggesting that the CRC did not highlight concerns in this area for the country under review. This absence of data may indicate limited reporting or that issues such as screen time, digital stress, or online mental-health impacts were not explicitly raised. Nonetheless, these topics remain globally relevant and should still be monitored as digital engagement increases.

Online safety and protection

Awareness campaigns on safe internet use receive the highest urgency score (2), indicating a clear need for stronger national efforts to educate children and communities about online risks. Safeguarding policies and accountability in digital media show moderate urgency (1), suggesting that frameworks exist but require further strengthening to ensure children’s protection. Complaint and reporting mechanisms score 0, implying that either no concerns were raised or this issue received little emphasis in the Committee’s review.

Privacy and data protection

Privacy and data protection show no urgency score, meaning the Committee did not identify specific shortcomings or did not address the issue in detail. This lack of reference could stem from limited national reporting or from privacy concerns being overshadowed by other digital priorities. Even so, safeguarding children’s personal information remains a critical foundation for safe digital participation.

Digital access and participation

Digital access and participation also have no available data, indicating that the CRC did not emphasise barriers to connectivity, affordability, or children’s opportunities to engage meaningfully online. The absence of explicit concerns may reflect either adequate national provisions or insufficient information submitted to the Committee. Regardless, equitable digital inclusion continues to be essential for ensuring all children benefit from digital environments.

Concluding Observations CRC

  1. “However, the Committee remains seriously concerned about: Increased levels of violence against children, particularly sexual exploitation and abuse, including online gender-based violence and domestic violence.”
  2. “Strengthen awareness-raising and education programmes and campaigns with the involvement of children, in order to change attitudes, traditions, customs and behavioural practices that often result in underreporting and serve as a justification for domestic violence and sexual exploitation and abuse of children, including online;”
  3. “Provide adequate human, financial and technical resources for the effective implementation of the Cyber Security and Cyber Crime Act and ensure that Internet service providers are regulated to ensure online safety;”
  4. “Ensure that health facility birth registration desks are widely available throughout the country and are always stocked with birth notification forms, and consider digitalizing the birth notification system at the health facility level to ensure a single procedure of birth notification for health and civil notification purposes;”
  5. “With reference to its general comments No. 13 (2011) on the right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence and No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, as well as targets 5.2, 16.1 and 16.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Committee urges the State party to…”
  6. “”Continue strengthening its data-collection system and ensure that data collected on children’s rights cover all areas of the Convention, 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;”
  7. “Develop and systemize the comprehensive collection of data on children with disabilities.”
  8. “Track lead poisoning, including mortality, in the health management information system or develop a separate database for Kabwe to track lead poisoning in children.”

Zambia
2022

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