Child Pornography moving from Russia to Ukraine

Around 18% of the services providing child pornography are now on Ukrainian territory. Children’s rights defenders say that their number has increased since Russia began fighting cybercrime better.

Child Pornography is one of the things most often sought on the Internet.  Approximately 25-35% of pornographic material where children are abused comes from former Soviet republics, including Russia, Belarus and Moldova, according to Olha Shvedova from ECPAT (End Child Prostitution Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes) in the CIS.

She says that the most clients for “Slavonic” child porn on the Internet are American and West Europeans. The demand is for white children, she explains, with the harder the child pornography, the more expensive it is. Those who can afford that are from richer countries with access to the Internet and money. She says that it all begins with simple chatting on the Internet, then gets to sexual exploitation of children and inclining them to suicide.

Russia is fighting it better

Olha Shvedova stresses that there are laws in Ukraine for preventing circulation of child pornography on the Internet, but they are often simply not implemented.  She says that there is now an effective department within the Ministry of Internal Affairs fighting cybercrime, including child Internet pornography, however it hasn’t been working that long and cannot catch all crimes on the Internet. In Russia the work has been organized more efficiently and clearly, which is why criminals are more and more often moving to Ukraine.

From a report by Lilia Hrushko at http://dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6300647,00.html