The UAE TRA efforts to support Children helplines in the UAE
UAE gives child online protection a special care, as it helps protecting and empowering the next generation that will lead the country later. For that reason, the UAE released the Wadeema law in 2016, in an effort to guarantee the rights for the children to stay away from any risks, be it online or offline. And to support this law and other laws before it, children helplines were established in the Emirates. One of them is the Ministry of Interior Chile Protection Center that aims to undertake the role of developing, implementing and customizing the initiatives, processes aiming at providing safety, security and protection for all children living at UAE or even those coming as visitors. Other examples are Sharjah Child Help Line at Protection of Child Rights and Dubai Foundation For Women & Children. There is also a free national number for reporting child abuse in all of the Emirates on 800 700.
As the regulator for both telecommunications and technology in the UAE, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), a member in the ITU, have put a full program to support the children helplines in the UAE by spreading the awareness on how to deal with cases related to children abuse online both for the children and for the parents. First, TRA launched a full curriculum for the school students, from grade 1 to 12, to teaches them the best practices in dealing with the Internet. TRA also conducts regular awareness sessions as well as workshops and events to better improve the children understanding of the web and the safe ways of using it.
Second, as the cyber blackmailing started to increase in the UAE, TRA launched a full nation-wide campaign to address it starting of 2015. Hundreds of awareness sessions on cyber blackmailing were given to parents as well as youth and children, with another supportive material on the social media and the newspapers, TV channels, and radio.
Finally, TRA launched the Salim character which is a mascot for all the campaigns and efforts to raise the awareness for children, and it had a great impact in making children more interested in this topic. Salim participated in many national cartoon animations, comic stories, as well as mobile and virtual reality games. And recently, Salim became the national character for online safety for children and students, with the new salim.ae website launched, to be the hub for all online safety content in the UAE.
That was about awareness, but TRA is the regulator for the Internet access, so it used this privilege to block any content that would impact the society badly, one of which is the children pornography, as well as contents not suitable for their children’s age.
TRA has a long-term vision, which is taken from the UAE vision 2021 of preserving a cohesive society proud of its identity and sense of belonging. TRA is working on many other projects to protect children online, which will come out to light soon.