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The Ordo Iuris Institute submitted an opinion as part of the consultations conducted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concerning children’s rights and safety in the digital environment.

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The Institute stressed that mechanisms for children’s participation in shaping digital regulations, as well as digital education, should strengthen — rather than replace — parents’ role as the natural representatives of their children’s interests.

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Ordo Iuris criticized the EU’s draft CSAM Regulation, the so-called “Chat Control 2.0,” pointing out that it would require scanning all user communications, including encrypted messages, regardless of any suspicion against a specific person.

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As a more effective alternative, the opinion proposed targeted measures such as court orders against specific suspected accounts, and identifying the root causes of the problem, including children’s unrestricted access to pornography.

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Ordo Iuris also drew attention to the risk of excessive, automated content moderation by online platforms and to the insufficient effectiveness of existing appeal mechanisms for users.
 

Family, not the state, as the natural environment for protecting children

In mid-August, the Ordo Iuris Institute submitted an opinion as part of public consultations conducted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), concerning children’s rights and safety in the digital environment. The consultations were initiated pursuant to United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution No. 56/6, which mandated OHCHR to organize five regional consultations on threats to children’s safety online and to prepare a report with recommendations, to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council at its 64th session, planned for February–March 2027.

Ordo Iuris’s opinion, prepared as a response to sixteen detailed questions formulated by OHCHR, addresses the most significant threats facing children online in Europe, the role of the family in shaping digital policy, and — above all — the tension between protecting children and the right to privacy and secure communication enjoyed by all internet users.

In its opinion, the Institute stressed that mechanisms for children’s participation in the preparation of digital regulations should be complementary to — not a substitute for — the role of parents as the natural representatives of their children’s interests. Ordo Iuris pointed to the risk of creating legal frameworks in which a child’s welfare is interpreted in isolation from the welfare of the family, and in which decisions concerning the child are made in opposition to the position of the child’s own parents. A similar logic guided the Institute’s response on digital education, in which it noted that the most effective programs are those that strengthen parents in their role as the child’s primary caregivers and guides in the digital world, rather than those that treat a child’s digital competencies as a goal independent of parental oversight.

Protecting children and young people versus internet users’ privacy

However, most of the opinion is devoted to the tension between protecting children from sexual exploitation and the right to private communication. The Institute pointed to the EU’s draft regulation on preventing and combating child sexual abuse (COM/2022/209), commonly known as “Chat Control 2.0,” as the clearest example of a measure that, despite its stated goal of protecting children, would disproportionately interfere with fundamental human rights. The draft would allow national authorities to require hosting and interpersonal communication service providers to scan the content of all messages sent by a service’s users — including private family correspondence and communications protected by professional secrecy — even where nothing indicated that a given user had committed, or planned to commit, an offense.

Ordo Iuris pointed out that there is currently no way to reconcile such a scanning obligation with the preservation of end-to-end encryption — the technology that makes it impossible for anyone other than the sender and recipient to read a message. The Institute also stressed that service providers forced to weaken encryption would create a security vulnerability that criminals and hostile states could exploit to access the messages of millions of innocent people.

As an alternative to mass scanning covering all users, Ordo Iuris proposed solutions based on a specific suspicion against a given person, confirmed by an independent court, such as orders concerning individual, identified accounts. The Institute also pointed to the need to create lists of websites containing materials depicting the exploitation of children, to facilitate and better fund mechanisms for users to report abuse, and to strengthen specialized police units dealing with such crimes — as measures that are more effective, and less invasive of privacy, than universal control of communications.

Causes, not just effects: the Polish example

In its response concerning the systemic interventions needed to combat the harming of children online, the Institute stressed the need to address the causes underlying this phenomenon — including children’s unrestricted access to pornography and the normalization of the sexualization of children in advertising, fashion, and entertainment — rather than relying solely on the mass surveillance of content. As a positive example of this approach, Ordo Iuris cited the ongoing legislative process in Poland on protecting minors from access to pornographic content, in which experts had for years called for the introduction of a precise, statutory definition of “pornography.” In April 2026, Poland’s Ministry of Justice formally endorsed this approach, supporting the introduction of a legal definition — which the Institute presented as evidence that regulations targeting a precisely defined category of harm are more effective than measures based on vague, broad concepts.

Risk of excessive moderation and gaps in appeal mechanisms

Ordo Iuris also addressed the practical operation of the EU’s Digital Services Act, noting that the severe financial penalties platforms face can create an incentive for excessive, automated removal of content at the slightest doubt — at the expense of the legitimate speech of minor users themselves. The Institute also noted that formal transparency requirements and appeal mechanisms, while a step in the right direction, often prove insufficient in practice given the advantage that automated moderation systems and large platforms hold over the individual user. The Institute identified less visible forms of restricting access to content — such as reduced reach or hidden comments without formal removal — as particularly problematic, since they are difficult to detect and to appeal.

“Ordo Iuris’s participation in the OHCHR consultations matters to the Institute for several reasons. First, it allows the Institute to present, on the international stage, a position that combines a genuine concern for children’s safety online with a consistent defense of the right to privacy and secure communication, opposing the false dichotomy that protecting children requires giving up basic civil liberties. Second, the opinion gives the Institute an opportunity to present, at the global level, arguments it has formulated for years regarding EU legislative proposals such as the CSAM Regulation, extending their reach beyond the European context. Third, consistently emphasizing the family’s role as the natural environment for realizing children’s rights — as opposed to models that treat the child as autonomous from the parents — is an important voice in an international debate so far dominated by a different, more individualistic vision of children’s rights,” emphasizes Patryk Ignaszczak, an analyst at the International Law Center of the Ordo Iuris Institute.

Translated using Claude.ai

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Source of cover photo: iStock