International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) Initiative:
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has joined the Interpol’s International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) initiative.
- This will allow it to collaborate with investigators in other countries for detecting child sex abuse online and identifying abusers, victims, and crime scenes from audio-visual clips using specialised software.
- Interpol is the world’s largest international police organisation with 195 member countries, and is headquartered in Lyon, France.
- Each member country hosts an Interpol National Central Bureau that connects their national law enforcement to it and in India, the CBI is that nodal agency.
- The ICSE database uses video and image comparison to analyse Child Sex Exploitation Material (CSEM) and make connections between victims, abusers and places.
- As of July 2022, over 30,000 victims of child abuse and over 13,000 criminals have been identified by the Interpol using this database and software.
- India is the 68th country to have access to this database and software.
- Interpol’s website said that on average, the database helps identify seven child victims everyday globally.
