Combating child pornography and abuse cannot be achieved by a single organisation or within a single country, Home Affairs Deputy Minister Malusi Gigaba said in Brussels on Wednesday.

"Child abuse has become a global pervasive crime and information and communications technology has aggravated it ensuring that this crime transcends national borders and defies time and other limitations," he said.

"It is important that strategic partnerships beyond any single national border be forged to protect all children without regard to where they are and who they are," Gigaba told an Inhope conference.

He said South Africa had acknowledged the importance of a proactive approach to fighting child pornography and all forms of child abuse.

Child pornography increasing

Child pornography in South Africa was increasing, not only at possession and distribution level, but at the physical abuse level where children were enrolled in the production of material.

"We regard child pornography essentially as child abuse and a violation of the childhood, the innocence and the rights of the children.

"Beyond the image of child pornography is a real child that has really been sexually abused; and even if it is a simulated image, it signifies all children who stand the risk of being sexually abused for real."

The threat of 2010

Beyond the physical abuse of a child, Gigaba said the abuse continued on the web, in videos, on computer disks and in photographs.

While there were "massive benefits" from globalisation, strict national regulations were needed in cyberspace, he said.

"The abuse of the child does not end when the actual physical abuse ends; it continues to live in other equally degrading and violent forms right through infinity."

"As South Africa prepares to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, we cannot ignore the lurking spectre of the sexual exploitation of children during this spectacular event."

Gigaba said the event could provide opportunities for abusers, exploiters, traffickers, collectors of child pornography and paedophiles to do their business while pretending to be soccer fans.

Strategies were already in place to deal with any paedophilia arising at the time of the World Cup, he said.

Sapa

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