UN Expert Calls for Stronger Action to Protect Children from Exploitation and Abuse

Presenting her vision report to the UN General Assembly, Kihara-Hunt identified implementation as a central challenge, calling for protection systems shaped by children’s needs and lived experiences.

Strong laws and international commitments must translate into protection that children can experience in their everyday lives, says Ai Kihara-Hunt, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children.

Presenting her vision report to the UN General Assembly, Kihara-Hunt identified implementation as a central challenge, calling for protection systems shaped by children's needs and lived experiences. Her priorities cover the full journey from preventing abuse to protection, response, rehabilitation, justice and reintegration.

Protecting children requires serious investment in addressing the circumstances that make exploitation possible, including poverty, displacement, discrimination, social exclusion and limited access to education and essential services. Unequal power relationships, weak protection systems and the absence of safe alternatives can deepen those risks, leaving children exposed to people who take advantage of their circumstances.

Kihara-Hunt called for coordinated action across governments, businesses, technology companies, schools, health professionals and communities. Each has a role in preventing harm and ensuring that children can access support when they need it.

The strength of that response depends on how these groups work together, because protection cannot rest with a single institution or begin only after abuse has occurred.

Technology Is Creating New Challenges for Protection

Rapid technological change is giving perpetrators new ways to identify, groom and exploit children across online platforms and national borders. Emerging forms of abuse facilitated by artificial intelligence add to the challenges facing protection services and investigators.

Kihara-Hunt warned that the ability to detect abuse, investigate offences and protect children must develop at the same pace as these threats.

The increasingly transnational nature of exploitation makes cooperation essential, with perpetrators and affected children potentially located in different countries. Digital spaces also create gaps in visibility for protection systems that were not designed to recognise the ways exploitation now occurs.

Children Outside Formal Systems Must Be Reached

The report draws attention to children who may be absent from formal protection systems, including those in street situations, those without parental care and children affected by migration, displacement and crises.

For these children, the existence of services offers little reassurance if institutions cannot identify their needs or reach them safely.

Kihara-Hunt urged authorities to examine how they find and protect children who remain outside their systems, particularly as exploitation moves through digital and informal spaces that established services may struggle to see.

That question places responsibility on protection systems to reach excluded children and understand the circumstances shaping their lives.

Children Need a Safe Say in Decisions Affecting Them

Children should have opportunities to help design, implement and evaluate the laws, policies and programmes that affect them, including children with lived experience of exploitation and abuse. Their participation must be meaningful, safe, informed and voluntary, with the principle of doing no harm guiding every decision about their involvement. Listening to children should help improve protection without exposing them to further harm.

Kihara-Hunt called for stronger cooperation, sustained political commitment and accountability to address abuse that is often hidden and crosses borders. The central test, she said, is whether protection systems work from the child's perspective, from preventing exploitation to supporting recovery, access to justice and reintegration.