A digital game aims to prevent online sexual abuse in Thailand and Cambodia
A collaborative digital project targets child exploitation in Thailand and Cambodia, a British Olympic gold medalist reveals he was a victim of trafficking, and a global report finds a quarter of countries have nationality laws which discriminate against women.
A new digital game is set to help children and young people across Thailand and Cambodia learn to spot signs of online grooming and recognize the tactics that abusers and traffickers employ. The educational game, called May and Bay, was designed and developed collaboratively by child protection, anti-trafficking and gaming experts, led by the University of Kent’s Centre for Child Protection (CCP) with A21, ECPAT International and Playerthree, and a consultant professor from the University of Stirling. It will alert children to the dangers of online interactions in two major source countries for online sexual abuse material, and aims to both empower young people and provide training for child protection practitioners. May and Bay is CCP’s first fully international project and was funded by UNICEF’s End Violence Against Children (EVAC) fund.
Designed for children aged eight to 14, the game comprises virtual scenarios that follow the stories of two children as they encounter the insidious world of online grooming. The simulations are interactive and encourage children’s critical thinking and autonomous decision-making skills as they progress through the scenes. This approach empowers children to understand how their actions can protect their characters – and therefore themselves – from exploitation and abuse. Currently, May and Bay is available in Thai, Khmer and English.
“May” is an 11-year-old schoolgirl and aspiring model from a large city setting, and her storyline centers on grooming and explicit images. “Bay” is a boy living in a town, whose story addresses issues of grooming, trafficking and border crossing. At various stages, the game features learning points which allow users to reflect on what is happening to the children and what they should do next. Trustworthy adult characters, such as teachers, police officers and social workers, are also on hand to help keep May and Bay safe. The game is designed to be played under supervision by a trained adult, so that children can stop periodically and discuss what they have done, ask questions, and evaluate the situations they have encountered, with adult guidance.
The game is also designed to facilitate the training of professional practitioners and those working directly with children in Cambodia and Thailand by giving them age-appropriate tools with which to educate young people about online safety. It is hoped this training will encourage facilitating organizations to adopt further safeguarding mechanisms within preventative education and to organize their own safeguarding roadmaps.
A21 and ECPAT International were able to provide the team with culturally specific information and knowledge that allowed them to tailor the games to their national contexts, thus ensuring the simulations felt familiar and believable to users. Several rounds of focus group surveys, with nearly 300 children and more than 80 professionals (including teachers, NGO staff, government officials and law enforcement) were also carried out.
Because of its digital format, the game will allow back-end data on its impact to be collected throughout the game play, by analyzing both children’s responses to interactive elements and professional feedback about its effectiveness. This will enable better insight into which features embed learning most effectively, and which elements of the storyline develop skills of critical analysis and thinking.
In the future, the team hopes to add further language options and expand May and Bay to other countries. Training for practitioners is currently available in Thai, Khmer or English and provides an overview of the game, demonstrations of how it works and how to run it with children, and guidance on what to do if a child self-identifies any form of abuse. For further information about the game, or for details of facilitator training, please contact Professor Jane Reeves at j.reeves@kent.ac.uk or Stephanie Jones at steph.j@a21.org.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
British Olympic gold-medal winner Sir Mo Farah revealed in a recent documentary that he was trafficked to the UK at the age of nine and forced to work as a domestic servant. His revelation has sparked an urgent conversation about the realities of trafficking and, following the airing of the documentary, UK anti-trafficking organizations signed a joint statement calling on the government to improve protections for trafficking victims.
A new study by Polaris analyzes data gathered by the National Human Trafficking Hotline from 2018 to 2020. Polaris learned of nearly 4,000 individual victims of labour trafficking in that time period who were in the United States on temporary work visas – overall, more than half the victims whose immigration status was identified were foreign nationals holding legal visas of some kind. A recording of the presentation of the report is available here.
A quarter of countries still have discriminatory nationality laws that deny women the same rights as men, according to a worldwide report by the international human rights organization Equality Now. Women are prohibited from passing their citizenship onto their children and foreign spouses, and face restrictions on changing or retaining their nationality after marriage. Those affected are at higher risk of a range of human rights violations.
Indonesia says it has temporarily stopped sending its citizens to work in Malaysia, including the thousands regularly recruited for the plantation sector, citing a breach in a worker recruitment deal between the two countries. The freeze is the latest blow for Malaysia – the world’s second-largest palm oil producer and a key link in the global supply chain – which is facing a shortage of some 1.2 million workers.
Aid and development organizations are at a turning point and urgently need to change, according to a new study. Academics talked to the world’s leading development charities about the changing humanitarian landscape, in which the dominance of Global North international NGOs is expected to decline. The heads of large charitable organizations said the future looks uncertain, as they struggle to free themselves from day-to-day constraints and face “major disruptors” such as the climate crisis.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has published a notice and request for comment (RFC) on the Biden Administration’s “Trade Strategy to Combat Forced Labor”. The deadline for comments is 5 August.
The Organised Crime: West African Response to Trafficking (OCWAR-T) project is looking for new organizations to join the West African Research Network on Organised Crime (WARNOC). The project seeks to strengthen structures and capacities at national and regional levels, in order to create a more effective response to transnational organized crime in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region.
The Salvation Army UK and Ireland is recruiting for an International Projects Advisor within The Anti-Trafficking and Modern Slavery Unit. This is a nine-month fixed term contract, ideally with an early August start date but some flexibility into September. Applications close 29 July.
ELEVATE is looking for a Senior Project Manager to support its work to effectively manage, implement and report on its U.S. Department of Labor-funded Global Trace Protocol project (GTP), aimed at reducing child and forced labour in global supply chains through traceability.
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