Pakistan's digital boom exposes children to growing online exploitation

A report by UNICEF Office of Strategy and Evidence, ECPAT International and INTERPOL, funded by Safe Online, found that Pakistan's rapid digitization and widespread smartphone adoption have left children increasingly vulnerable to technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse, with findings revealing that the harm remains largely hidden. The study also criticized Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act for using the term child pornography to refer to child sexual abuse material, terminology that child-protection experts say downplays coercion and exploitation by framing such material as a form of legitimate pornography rather than evidence of abuse.

The operational gap the UNICEF-ECPAT-INTERPOL study identifies is the absence of detection infrastructure that surfaces hidden abuse in real time. Guardii's platform detects grooming, sextortion and coercion as they unfold in direct-message conversations across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other channels, identifying sustained targeting and escalation patterns rather than relying on keyword filters or retrospective content sweeps, and reports the shape and severity of a conversation to a parent, school or designated authority without requiring anyone to read transcripts. In jurisdictions where enforcement capacity is limited and abuse is underreported, such targeted detection surfaces children in crisis who would otherwise remain invisible until material is produced or physical harm has occurred.