Challenges of protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation on the internet: the case of Kosovo

This study includes a vertical analysis of the legal framework regarding the sexual abuse and exploitation of children on the internet. It starts with the examination of the international legal instruments for then continuing with the legislation of Kosovo by evaluating its compliance with these international legal standards in the fight against online sexual exploitation of children while trying to draw recommendations for future development. Finally, the paper includes an empirical part based on interviews with law enforcement. Detecting sexual exploitation of children on the internet is not as easy as detecting offline sexual exploitation. There are no available statistics on the scale of online child sexual abuse in Kosovo, but it is well-known among law-enforcement agents that a large gap exists between the number of reported cases and the actual cases. This discrepancy happens for various reasons and factors which will be further explained in this paper through the analyses of the interviews conducted with the prosecutors and investigators of Kosovo in charge of the investigation of child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation cases.