The report shows that the internet-based sexual exploitation of minors in Kenya was found to be more rampant on Facebook than any other site, and it concludes that this makes the platform of the tech giant extremely unsafe for children.

The report by Interpol, UNICEF's Office of Research-Innocenti and End Violence against Children indicated that Facebook accounted for more than 90 percent of all the instances of online sexual exploitation and abuse of minors in the East African country last year. The report was informed by data from the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), interviews with minors, their parents, policing agencies, and legal representatives.

In addition to Facebook, other platforms where child sex abuse imagery and videos were commonly "possessed, manufactured and distributed" included WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube. According to the report, data from NCMEC shows that globally, Facebook reported more than 20 million child-sex abuse images last year, 37 times more than those reported by Google, which ranked second. It also succeeds investigations showing that Instagram seriously affects the mental health of teenage girls — even as Meta, Instagram's parent company, mulled plans to launch the currently paused Instagram Kids for minors under 13 years. Meta has taken several steps to safeguard the use of the platforms by minors, including "sophisticated technologies" that include PhotoDNA, said TechCrunch, with the help of which pictures that exploit children are identified and deleted. It further said it was working with law enforcement agencies to "stem this vice."

"It has no tolerance for the abhorrent abuse of children and uses sophisticated technologies to combat it," says Meta's Eastern Africa communications manager, Janet Kemboi.

“We encourage anyone who sees content they think violates our community standards to report it using our in-app reporting tools. We’ve recently made it easier to report content for violating our child exploitation policies, and now offer a dedicated option to report content that ‘involves a child’ on Facebook and Instagram. These reports are prioritized for review,” she said.

Overall, incidents of online child sexual abuse in Kenya increased by six percentage points, to 14,434 occurrences, according to NCMEC reports from the CyberTipline.
CyberTipline is the centralized reporting system for cases of sexual exploitation of children. Kenya is the only country in East Africa that has a direct link to NCMEC's reporting system through its Directorate of Criminal Investigation's (DCI) Anti-Human Trafficking & Child Protection Unit (AHTCPU) and Interpol's International Child Sexual Exploitation Database. "WhatsApp and Facebook or Facebook Messenger were the social media and instant messaging apps via which children were most commonly targeted. This is probably because Facebook and WhatsApp – the two most popular social media platforms in Kenya – are where children spend much of their time online," the report said.

Mueni Mutisya, AHTCPU in charge, revealed to TechCrunch that the authority receives about 22 cybertip reports daily. She said the country has experienced a spike in cases recorded since the start of the COVID pandemic, a situation that has also been fueled by the use of social sites.

"Social media has amplified the sharing, production, and distribution of online sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA). It has made it much easier for predators to trick young people into sharing explicit images of themselves and falling prey to an overly sexualized culture."

WhatsApp is the most popular social app in Kenya, followed by Facebook and YouTube, according to the social media landscape report. To date, over three quarters of Kenya's population is connected to the internet, meaning sites like Facebook and WhatsApp are easily accessible.

In what appears to be a shift in the way child predators prey on children, more than half of the victims interviewed for the report said requests for sexual materials were made online rather than offline — as one in five minors said they were approached in person.

According to the study, minors aged 12 to 17 were the most vulnerable to online sexual exploitation, and both girls and boys were exposed to the same risk online. The perpetrators were often known to the victims, and they used gifts or money (sexual extortion) to influence the minors to go meet them or to share imagery or videos. The offers were commonly done through "Facebook or Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and through YouTube". A few cited Instagram and ByteDance's platform TikTok. However, others were blackmailed or threatened into sharing or taking part in obscenities.

The report further pointed out that foreign law enforcement agencies termed Kenya as a source of commercial forms of livestreaming of child sexual abuse. Google search engine trends indicated that sex offenders in the country were searching for images and videos "depicting sexual activity with and between teenagers, with children and babies. Reports of security agencies identified Kenya as a hotspot for foreign traveling child-sex offenders too.".

Online grooming of children for sexual purposes with the intent of manipulating them into generating and sharing abuse material, with no intent to meet or abuse them in person, was also prevalent on social sites.

The report states that this is one of the forms of OCSEA, along with livestreaming, that is not treated as a criminal offense in Kenya currently. Offenders can only be charged based on the Computer Misuse Act which penalizes the perpetrators for exposing a child to sexualized content and the Sexual Offences Act that criminalizes child pornography. According to the report, "in Kenya, the provision of the upcoming Children Bill 2021 addressing online grooming will only cover online grooming with the intent of meeting the child and may not therefore apply to situations where, for example, a child is asked to send sexual content to an offender via online platforms.".

The bill, which is currently going through legislative approval, was submitted in 2020. A fortnight ago, lawmakers invited the public to make recommendations for the new law — providing an opportunity for this gap to be plugged.

“It is hoped that a provision outlawing grooming where the sexual abuse occurs online could still be included,” the report said.

Due to the cross-border nature of these crimes, Kenya works closely with international and local authorities to track the activities of the offenders and to make arrests. Kenya's DCI AHTCPU also works with the country's communications regulator to alert the public of the nature of these crimes and to encourage them to make reports.

"Because of the Global nature of internet crimes, the DCI AHTCPU has partnered with other national and international strategic partners to help in the fight against OCSEA. We use Interpol to issue notices in case of cross border OCSEA cases," said Mutisya.

We also collaborate with the International Liaison Officer at the British High commission and the FBI legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy (in Kenya) among other international colleagues in trying to find justice for the victims of cybercrimes, follow up with offenders among many others," she added, citing public outreach and school visits as additional ways in which to enlighten, create awareness and sensitize.

The authors of Disrupting Harm hope that the findings that appear in the report will be a road map toward adopting strategies for dealing with online sexual abuse of children.