Delivering on Children’s Rights Online: An Improved Digital World for All?

  • Panel
  • Maritime
  • Thursday 22.05 — 10:30 - 11:45

Organising Institution

5Rights Foundation

Europe

5Rights fights for systemic change so the digital world respects children’s rights and caters to their needs by design and default. We amplify children’s voices, build capacity, and deliver ground-breaking research, legal frameworks, and technical tools. Our work raises awareness, shifts narratives, and re-centers policy and technical approaches around children’s needs while fostering a sustainable ecosystem for tech accountability.
  • Academic 1
  • Business 2
  • Policy 3
Children are a priority in EU digital policy for 2024-2029. Beyond fake dichotomies between protection and privacy, a focus on children’s rights in the digital environment could drive institutions and tech companies to ensure better online experiences for minors - and everyone else. From fixing recommender systems and edtech, to reining in advertising, detrimental data practices and addictive design features, there is growing awareness that children must be protected against risks and harms of the digital environment, as well as empowered to learn, play and participate. Robust protection of children’s data under GDPR, ambitious implementation of the DSA, and reform of consumers law to redress digital asymmetries and tackle vulnerabilities with a Digital Fairness Act can show that regulating and innovating for a better internet is possible. Fixing children’s online experiences, the EU may show a way forward for all.

Questions to be answered

  1. How can the recognised vulnerability and additional rights of children deliver an ambitious and radical Digital Fairness Act?
  2. How can we get age-verification right, to protect everyone’s privacy and empower children?
  3. What lessons can tech companies draw from safety-by-design, age-appropriate design and child rights by design approaches?
  4. How can we translate human and children’s rights into practical design and development requirements for digital products and services?

Moderator

Leanda Barrington-Leach

5Rights Foundation - Europe

Leanda Barrington-Leach is the Executive Director of the 5Rights Foundation, where she leads the work of the global team across research, youth engagement, advocacy, standardisation and compliance, fighting for the digital world to cater for children, by design and default. Leanda is a passionate life-long advocate for human rights, with more than two decades experience in international policy spanning diplomacy, strategic consultancy and charity sector work. She joined 5Rights from the European External Action Service where she was Adviser to the Secretary General focusing on Strategic Communications and the fight against Disinformation.

Speaker

Linn Høgåsen

Norwegian Consumer Council - Norway

Linn Høgåsen is a senior digital policy officer at the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), working on issues related to consumer rights, advertising, data protection, and children’s rights. She has contributed to reports on subjects such as deceptive design/dark patterns, generative AI, and commercial exploitation of children, as well as the NCCs work on upholding consumers’ rights through data protection complaints. Some of the projects have also involved the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).

Speaker

Felix Mikolasch

noyb - Austria

Felix Mikolasch is a data protection lawyer at noyb - European Center for Digital Rights, a Vienna-based not-for-profit association focused on strategic GDPR enforcement. Together with the Sustainable Computing Lab at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, NOYB started ADPC (Advanced Data Protection Control). ADPC is a technical specification that describes how signals for automated communication of users data protection decisions can be sent from the terminal of a user (usually the browser) to a website. It aims to demonstrate that a more reasonable approach to communicate privacy preferences than typical “cookie banners” is possible.

Speaker

Ali Hessami

Vega Systems - United Kingdom

Ali Hessami is currently the Director of R&D and Innovation at Vega Systems, London, UK. He has an extensive track record in systems assurance and safety, security, sustainability, knowledge assessment/management methodologies. He has a background in the design and development of advanced control systems for business and safety-critical industrial applications. Hessami represents the UK on European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) & International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) – safety systems, hardware, software, cybersecurity and AI standards committees. In 2017 Hessami joined the IEEE Standards Association (SA), for the new landmark IEEE 7000 standard focused on “Addressing Ethical Concerns in System Design” and was appointed as the Technical Editor and the Chair of the standard to its publication in 2021. In November 2018, he was appointed as the VC and Process Architect of the IEEE’s global Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous & Intelligent Systems (ECPAIS) developing six suites of AI Ethics Criteria and associated assessment and certification system under IEEE brand, CertifAIEd. Ali also supported the IEEE 2089 standard for Age Appropriate Digital Services Framework based on the 5Rights Principles for Children, as Technical Editor. Ali currently chairs the “Universal Ethics Community of Practice on AI”, focused on developing and publishing open access guidelines on Safety of Agentic AI, Digital Trust, Avant-garde Governance and Cybersecurity of AI.

Speaker

Ioannis Koutsoumpinas

Ministry for Digital Governance - Greece

Ioannis Koutsoumpinas is an EU-qualified Lawyer and a Legal Advisor to the Greek Minister of Digital Governance. He has been heavily involved in the drafting and implementation of Greece's National Strategy for Protecting Minors from Internet Addiction and heads a Working Group within the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance tasked with following EU action on the issue of minors' protection in the digital era. The Working Group is also tasked with drafting proposals relating to the Guidelines of art. 28 DSA and the future Digital Fairness Act. Since January 2025, he is a member of the Digital Services Expert Group of the EU Commission, on behalf of the Greek Government.