Non profit
Serbia: National year for protecting children online
Ensuring a safe internet environment for children will be the focus of this Year for the protection of children on the internet.
Jasna Matic, Serbian Minister of Telecommunications, announced last Tuesday, February 10, that Serbia has declared 2009 the year of protection of children on the internet and that the Ministry plans a variety of educational actions, round-table discussions, seminars and conferences with the aim to educate parents and teachers about the threats that internet poses to the children.
Matic announced the campaign at a press conference Matic announced the campaign at a press conference She says that the campaign will gather the highest state representatives, international organisations, civil society and private sector.
“Internet does bring the world into the children`s rooms, but it also brings things that are not good and that we need to protect the children from. This year, we aim to inform the parents about new technologies, since they often know less about internet than their children“, says Matic. She noted as the main problem the fact that children often post their personal data or photographs on the internet, which could be abused, adding that there are no surveys about child use of internet in Serbia. However, she added, experiences in the European Union show that 90 percent of the children in EU do it daily, and one third of them are subjected to some form of “internet abuse”.
The campaign is implemented in cooperation with software company Microsoft, and the official face of the campaign is rock-star Momcilo Bajagic-Bajaga.
