December 03, 2010

The “Child Online Protection” conference organized by The Higher Council for Children Protection (HCCP) and Microsoft was held at Radisson Hotel, Beirut under the patronage of H.E the Minister of Social Affairs Dr. Salim Sayegh on Monday, November 25th . The conference presented the dangers of the Internet and the solutions offered by Microsoft through protection dedicated software that can be used to ensure children online protection. Discussions also evolved around the solutions to be taken at a National level to protect children from Internet dangers.

The TRA actively participated in this conference where Eng. Said Haidar led and represented Dr. Imad Hoballah at panel discussion titled Technical framework to protect children online”

This panel gathered representatives from various NGOs and educational institutes where they discussed the optimal solutions that ISPs can offer to contribute to the child online protection efforts. All parties agreed that ISPs could participate in the overall awareness efforts through:

1- Distributing a “warning note” to the parents when acquiring an Internet account at their point of sales as well as via their website

2- Offering technical assistance to implement “parental control software / sharewares” when configuring the Internet account for the consumer.

3- Parents who do not wish to have this technical assistance should be signing a paper where they acknowledge having read about the offer for parental control and do not want to implement it along with their internet account.

These recommendations were finally raised to the general assembly of the conference and adopted by the Higher Council of Childhood Protection and the Minister of Social Affairs. These recommendations will be implemented in the draft of the code of conduct that is currently under preparation within the technical committee.

Dr. Wafa Bou Diab, Quality Control Expert at the TRA, led the panel session titled “Towards Child-Friendly Cybercafés: License provisions and technical requirements” and gave a presentation titled “ Towards Child-Friendly Internet Cafes” where she explained the risks that children are exposed to while using the Internet in cyber cafes. She also show-cased the example and efforts of other countries who regulated the cyber café business as well as the solutions that need to be implemented to protect children browsing the Internet in public places.

At the end of the second session the work groups presented the results of their discussions as well as their recommendations to be implemented in the draft code of conduct.

To view the presentation of Dr. Bou Diab in full, click here