A mission to end online child sexual exploitation in her ward : Bina Dahal's story
Ms Bina Dahal is a Community Police Officer in Nepal. Speaking on emerging issues affecting children, she said “I was not aware that so many children are being abused online. I did not know anything about online risks.” Today Ms Bina conducts sessions on online safety in schools as part of her work with the Nepal Police.
Work as a Community Police
Ms Bina Dahal loves her work. Residing in Kathmandu, Nepal, she has been a Community Police Officer since 2018.
“Community Police is a unit of Nepal Police which works on local-level community issues. Our work is to control crime and ensure peace and protection at the community level”, said Bina.
Bina represents Ward 31 of Kathmandu which is part of the nation’s Bagmati province. The prominent issues she works on are domestic violence and child protection.
Speaking on emerging issues affecting children, she said “I was not aware that so many children are being abused online. I did not know anything about online risks.”
Learning about online safety
Bina was introduced to the issue of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children (OCSE) through Terre des Hommes Netherlands’ (TdH NL) Safety for Children and their Rights OnLine (SCROL) project in Nepal which is being implemented in the Bagmati and Gandaki province.
“Through a Community Police orientation programme by a TdH NL partner, I learnt how concerning the issue of OCSE was. It was then that I started to observe this in the community. Children as young as 3 were using mobile phones without being monitored, reports of online crime, specifically sharing of online sexual abuse material were present”, she said.
Thus, Bina started on a new mission - to end OCSE in her ward.
“To me, prevention is better than cure. I had to do something constructive about online safety for children. I decided to conduct sensitisation sessions on OCSE in both private and community (public) schools of Ward 31”, she said. “These sessions focused on spreading awareness of online dangers and safe online practices such as ‘do not make friends with strangers online, do not share personal pictures, do not add your location to your posts’ and so on. I also stress the need for children to report online abuse as there is a fear around reporting.”
Bringing about changes
So far, Bina has covered 25 of the 29 schools in her ward reaching out to children from the age group of 12-19 years of age. These sessions are 45 minutes long and conducted during school hours on Fridays which is a ‘No-book Day’ in Nepal as part of the nation’s institutional initiative to encourage extra-curricular activities. The sessions are conducted in close-coordination with the SCROL project with support from TdH NL partner organisations.
Bina has begun to see changes in the children after her sessions.
“Children have started opening up to me about their online activity. I have also seen that many children have begun using the 1098 helpline number to report cases”, she said. “I am happy to see that the efforts of the Community Police are working. I plan to cover all the schools of my ward and work more closely with SCROL in the future.”
Bina integrates her efforts under Terre des Hommes Netherland’s SCROL project with the Nepal Police campaign, ‘Prohari Mero Saathi’ translated as ‘Police, My Friend’, an ongoing 5-year campaign to encourage public-friendly policing.
