Childlight: using data and insights to shine a light on the road ahead

Navigating without data is like driving in the dark without headlamps. Childlight’s vision, as a global child safety institute launched last year, is to use the illuminating power of data and insight to shine a light on the road ahead – and help children trapped in the darkness of sexual exploitation and abuse.

The fight to keep our young people safe and secure from harm has been hampered by a data disconnect between research and practice, and our aim is to work in partnership with many others to use our data insight to help join up the system and close the gaps.

Soon we will reach a key point in this journey when we produce the first global report on the extent of child sexual exploitation and abuse, following on from our recent in-depth look at the nature of this hidden pandemic.

It is an imperfect start because data differs in quality around the world; data foundations are inconsistent, definitions differ and, frankly, transparency isn’t what it should be so we can’t pretend to have all the numbers, let alone all the answers. To begin with, most of our figures will be at global and Unicef regional rather than country by country level. But as our partnerships grow, our annual global index – drawing upon ever more government-held data, administrative data and data held by tech platforms among others – will become an increasingly valuable tool. Essentially, by helping decision makers to better understand the scale of this growing crisis, we firmly believe it will better equip them to tackle it because with sufficient will, this problem is preventable.

In the short time since our launch last year, we’ve harnessed the expertise and energy of leading researchers, not only at our University of Edinburgh headquarters where our data team is led by Professor Debi Fry, but also across the world, from Australia to Malaysia, and from Canada to Columbia. Research led by our director-designate Professor Michael Salter, based at the University of New South Wales, served as a wake-up call, with its finding that around one in ten men have sexually offended online against children and that many would also commit contact offences if they believed it could be kept secret.

Uniquely, we also have decades of law enforcement experience at a senior level to draw upon to help ensure the data insights we produce are highly practical as we tackle this growing crisis. For my part, I previously served as director for Interpol’s global organised crime programme and as regional director for the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) in Africa. I’m also very fortunate to count among our team Kelvin Lay who, while with the NCA in Kenya, set up Africa’s first dedicated child exploitation and human trafficking units, and Doug Marshall, the former deputy national co-ordinator at Operation Hydrant, the UK response to non-recent child abuse.

Our multi-disciplinary approach means we not only produce high quality data insights but we can rapidly help turn that into action – working with authorities all over the world through our technical advisory programme. Acting on data intelligence, we can in this way help law enforcers pinpoint and arrest perpetrators and safeguard the children they have been abusing.

All of this has been made possible by the generosity of the Human Dignity Foundation whose vision grew into Childlight. We have also benefited very considerably from working in partnership with WeProtect Global Alliance since the start of our journey, and we are excited by the prospect of how much more we can now achieve as a new member of the alliance, working collaboratively with many others.

When the world is chaotic and changing rapidly, and there are mounting concerns about the lights being turned off on child sexual exploitation and abuse, we believe child sexual exploitation and abuse needs to be treated as a global health emergency. And we would like to work urgently with you and others to continue to shine a light on some of the world’s darkest crimes. Because, as our mantra goes, children can’t wait.

Paul Stanfield is CEO of Childlight Global Child Safety Institute and he would be delighted to discuss the work of the data institute with other alliance members. His email is paul.stanfield@ed.ac.uk