CBIS is honored to join academic experts, business leaders, politicians, and religious representatives from around the world at the World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World in Rome from October 3-6. Assistant Director of Catholic Responsible Investing Tracey Rembert will be working with this distinguished group to discuss the fight against online sexual child abuse and for child protection in the digital world.
Distinguished leaders in the Church, including Fr. Hans Zollner SJ, President of the Centre for Child Protection, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, and H.E. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See, opened the conference on Tuesday, re-emphasizing the Church’s commitment to combat child exploitation and abuse. Over the next three days, a variety of keynotes, workshops, and panels on cyber-safety, cyber-education, and cyber-responsibility will examine the role of companies, media, society, politicians, and churches in preventing child exploitation. On Friday, the event will conclude with a Papal Audience, where a statement of support regarding the dignity of children online will be presented to Pope Francis for endorsement.
You can listen to a livestream of the Congress online using YouTube, Facebook, or Ustream. The links for each are available on the event website.
Children and adolescents make up over a quarter of the more than 3.2 billion Internet users worldwide. This generation of over 800 million young users is in danger of becoming victims of exploitation and harassment. CBIS has a long history of engagement on human dignity, especially through our work to end human trafficking, and we have begun to engage specifically on child exploitation in the digital age. CBIS is the only investor participating in the Congress, and we are eager to use our unique position among stakeholders and apply strategies and education from the event to our active ownership efforts seeking better protection of children online.
Tracey will be sharing news posts on the CBIS website after the conference concludes, to summarize her thoughts and learnings from the event.