Wikimedia Foundation Child Rights Impact Assessment/Foreword and Executive Summary

Foreword from the Wikimedia Foundation

January 2024

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the global nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other community-led Wikimedia projects, making free and open knowledge accessible to everyone around the world. Wikipedia currently offers over 61 million articles across more than 300 languages, all for free and without commercial advertisements. A worldwide community of more than 265,000 volunteers contributes, edits, and moderates content across Wikimedia projects based on a robust set of policies, standards, and norms that volunteers have created and regularly enforce.

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects occupy a unique space in today’s internet ecosystem. The projects leverage a decentralized, community-governed model to create reliable, well-sourced knowledge for the public. Volunteer editors work together openly to prioritize accuracy and verifiability across these projects. As a result, Wikipedia and the other projects have become widely trusted sources of information to people around the world.

Wikimedia Foundation, Human Rights, and Children's Rights

The Foundation believes access to reliable information is a human right. The Wikimedia projects provide channels and platforms through which everyone, everywhere, has the right to share and access knowledge freely. Access to free and open knowledge, along with the fundamental right to freedom of expression, empowers people to exercise many other rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the rights to education, artistic expression, economic advancement, and political participation.

The Foundation, as the host to these community-led projects, is therefore committed to respecting the human rights of all those who seek, receive, and impart knowledge on Wikimedia projects—including children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that children are entitled to special care and assistance, a status which is further elaborated upon in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Foundation is thoroughly committed to its responsibility as the host and operator of a major online platform, which extends to protecting and upholding the rights of children who engage with our free knowledge projects around the world.

About this Child Rights Impact Assessment

This Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) forms an important part of the Foundation’s long-term efforts to meet the commitments articulated in our Human Rights Policy. It follows and builds upon our 2020 organizational Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA), which identified risks to children’s rights as one of five categories of significant human rights risks facing the Foundation and Wikimedia communities. The HRIA recommended that the Foundation undertake a targeted assessment to better understand risks to children’s rights.

This impact assessment was carried out in 2022 by Article One, a specialized strategy and management consultancy with expertise in human rights, responsible innovation, and sustainability. It was submitted to the Foundation in March 2023. The purpose of the assessment was to identify and analyze the impacts, risks, and opportunities posed to children who access and participate in Wikimedia projects. In doing so, the assessment proposes concrete recommendations that the Foundation and Wikimedia communities could implement to mitigate those risks, so that children can maximize the benefit they can receive by participating in the projects.

Foundation staff, volunteers, young users of Wikimedia projects, affiliates, and external subject matter experts were consulted as a part of this assessment. This included individuals who participated in Wikimedia projects as minors and continued their engagement into adulthood, activities that offered them unique perspectives on the risks and opportunities posed to children.

After reviewing the initial report, the Foundation and Article One partnered to carry out a comprehensive review of the internal CRIA report to prepare a version for publication. Some interviews and descriptions contained too much detail and could place individuals at risk or provide guidance to bad actors for how to cause harm if published. We made efforts to revise or generalize risky content where possible. Where it was not possible to revise or generalize such content to mitigate the risk of harm, it was deleted. This CRIA report is, therefore, a redacted version of the original.

Children and the Wikimedia Model

We know firsthand that Wikimedia projects have had a uniquely positive impact on the lives of many children. During this exercise, a participant told us that Wikipedia was a lifeline for them when they were growing up. We have heard many other similar stories from longtime Wikipedia editors and readers who discovered the projects in secondary school.

People of all ages use Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikipedia, to find and share knowledge. Wikimedia projects advance and support the right of all children, everywhere, to education and knowledge, and they enable children to more fully exercise a number of other rights. Access to free knowledge also helps children to exercise their freedom of expression, their right to access factually accurate health information, and their right to participate in cultural and civic life, among other rights, not only as youth but also as adults later in life.

This report affirms that children—and society at large—therefore stand to benefit significantly from accessing and being able to participate in Wikimedia projects. The Foundation is firmly committed to identifying and mitigating risks to children on our platforms so that they can safely participate in Wikimedia projects.

We seek ways to do so without compromising our strong commitments to privacy as a human right, data minimization, and the safety of our readers and volunteer editors. Our principles mean that it is difficult to assess how many users worldwide are under the age of 18. We therefore seek to ensure safe participation for all, regardless of age, even though we do not know precisely how many minors participate in these projects. Anyone can access and edit Wikimedia projects without providing any personal information, and those who do choose to create an account to add or edit content only need to provide the information that they choose to disclose. Wikimedia projects collect the minimal amount of data necessary for the projects to function, and they store it for only a short period of time. These principles allow the Foundation to protect and uphold users’ right to privacy and freedom of expression, including that of minors.

As the CRIA notes, Wikimedia’s model does not present the same risks as for-profit platforms whose business models aim to maximize advertising revenue by targeting users with highly engaging, but often unreliable or unsuitable, content. Our principles around privacy and data minimization mean that Wikimedia projects do not collect and sell user data or use it to target users with paid advertisements. Furthermore, content on Wikimedia projects, which is available to anyone regardless of age, is mainly educational in nature. Community-led processes set and enforce rules and editorial standards for well-sourced educational content. As a result, both the scope of content and nature of the user experience differ significantly from what children might encounter on commercial online platforms.

Governments around the world are increasingly working to promote child safety and wellbeing in digital spaces through legislation and regulation, a laudable goal that the Foundation supports. The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect earlier in 2023, is one such piece of legislation. This CRIA plays an important part in our work in response to the DSA, by helping us to understand the existence and possible severity of risks facing children on Wikimedia projects. The Foundation is committed to addressing these risks, and looks forward to doing so together with our volunteer communities in the months and years ahead.

Looking Ahead

Publishing this CRIA represents a significant step forward in the Foundation’s human rights endeavors, as it provides an opportunity for dialogue with Wikimedia affiliates, volunteers, and policymakers around the world on our collective work to protect children online. This report contains a number of recommendations that the Foundation can implement, which include developing and strengthening Foundation policies and improving how the Foundation evaluates grants to affiliates and other organizations when children may be involved. In the coming months, we will continue to speak with our volunteer communities to better understand the work they are already doing to educate and protect children on Wikimedia projects and at in-person events, as well as identify areas for collaboration between the Foundation and volunteers.

When reading the CRIA’s findings and recommendations, it is important to keep in mind that it was completed in March 2023. Since then, the Foundation has taken a number of concrete steps that aim to cohesively and sustainably address many of the report’s recommendations. These include:

• Finalized a child protection policy, a set of guidelines and procedures regarding changes to or removals of content on Wikimedia projects, as well as actions against specific individuals, upon receipt of valid complaints from the community or the public or as required by law; this policy will be published in the days following the publication of this report;
• Provided actionable, easy-to-understand recommendations in the child protection policy for children to protect themselves and their privacy on Wikipedia, including an email address to contact to express concerns;
• Continued supporting the development of the Incident Reporting System, which will provide users, including children, with streamlined reporting of and processing mechanisms for harassment and other inappropriate behaviors on Wikimedia projects;
• Included child rights considerations in recent reviews of grant applications. These are now being formalized into a set of standardized criteria that will be incorporated into grant application review processes;
• Started mapping activities and initiatives occurring within Wikimedia communities that strive to empower and protect children, so that we can identify future partners for addressing key recommendations in the report;
• Enhanced the structure and governance of the Foundation’s Human Rights Steering Committee so that it is able to better carry out and implement the findings of human rights due diligence efforts, including this CRIA;
• Designated a current staff member with the relevant experience and expertise to lead child safeguarding efforts within the Foundation’s Trust and Safety team.

Some key recommendations in this report provide opportunities for the Foundation and volunteer communities to collaborate more closely in order to incorporate child rights considerations into ongoing efforts, such as:

• Developing a child-friendly complaints and reporting mechanism, along with appropriate internal staffing, resourcing, and internal systems to process those complaints;
• Integrating children’s voices into the Foundation’s approach to protecting children and implementing its Design Principles;
• Empowering children to better protect themselves online by providing child-friendly resources and tools;
• Developing a proactive and rights-compatible approach to engaging on government regulations that affect children’s rights.

Other recommendations, however, will need to be led by Wikimedia volunteers and affiliates. These recommendations include those concerning broader movement strategy and governance. Specific recommendations for affiliates and volunteers to consider and lead on include evaluating the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy recommendations through a child rights lens.

It is important to acknowledge that implementing the recommendations contained within this report will be a long-term endeavor, and not every recommendation may be feasible.

Given the decentralized and community-governed nature of the projects, and the minimal personal data collected on individual readers and contributing editors, the Foundation cannot impose solutions from the top down, as is the case with for-profit platforms. Rather, the Foundation works with and supports volunteers and affiliates to create solutions together. Furthermore, as a nonprofit organization, the Foundation does not have the vast financial resources to make changes at the same scale as for-profit platforms.

The Foundation believes that Wikimedia's nonprofit, community-governed model will ultimately result in a more rights-respecting approach to child safety on the Wikimedia projects. This is essential for our commitment to enabling everyone to share what they know, and to make this knowledge accessible around the world.

Stephen LaPorte
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
17 January 2024

Executive Summary: Assessing the Child Rights Impacts of Wikimedia Free Knowledge Projects

The Wikimedia Foundation recognizes that core to its mission to help everyone, everywhere share in the sum of all knowledge is its commitment to respect and support the full range of human rights across its projects, including child rights.

Children interface with Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects in multiple roles, including as editors, readers, and participants of educational programming and grant activities. The Foundation and its knowledge projects create significant opportunities for the promotion of child rights, including the right to free expression, information, and to engage in civic life. However, access to online platforms, including but not limited to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, can also increase the risks of children accessing inappropriate content, being targeted for sexual exploitation, and being the recipient of harassment. While this report will examine these risks on Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects, unlike social media platforms that are managed for a profit and seek to maximize engagement through marketing and advertising, Wikimedia projects are not for profit and are considered to not carry the same risks as for-profit platforms.

To fully understand the range of potential harms, and opportunities, facing children who engage with Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects – both online and offline – Article One conducted a child rights impact assessment (CRIA) with the goal to:

1. Surface relevant child rights impacts, risks, and opportunities posed to children on Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, thereby enabling the Foundation to focus its limited resources on the most salient impacts.
2. Assess the degree to which each child rights issue is effectively managed by existing processes across the Wikimedia movement.
3. Propose actionable recommendations to fill existing management gaps and develop a holistic approach to managing child rights across the Foundation and the movement it supports.

This report summarizes the findings of the CRIA and proposed recommendations for the Foundation to consider, in conjunction with the broader Wikimedia movement, as it strengthens its approach to respecting and advancing child rights.

Scope & Methodology of the Assessment

Article One developed a four-phased methodology to conduct a CRIA of Wikimedia, its knowledge projects, and affiliates. The process was informed by guidance from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBPs), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and best practice approaches to assessing risks to children, including stakeholder engagement.

CRIA Methodology

Article One took a four-phase approach to understanding the child rights risks and opportunities associated with Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects and related spaces, and existing risk mitigation measures. In line with the CRC, children are defined as individuals under the age of 18.

The CRIA steps were as follows:

1. Desk Review, Benchmark, & Interviews [August - September 2022]
2. Tools Development [October - December 2022]
3. Consultations with Children [December 2022 - February 2023]
4. Saliency Assessment Recommendations & Report [February – March 2023]

The assessment began with a desk review of risks facing children in the digital environment and on Wikimedia free knowledge projects (additional details can be found in the full Scope and Methodology section of this report). The desk review was supplemented with a series of engagements, including:

• Interviews with eleven Wikimedia Foundation staff and two affiliate staff.
• Interviews with seven external child rights experts.
• Interviews and focus groups with nine former youth volunteers.
• A survey of youth volunteers, published in four languages and distributed through the Wikimedia Foundation’s Community Programs team.

Article One developed all research tools, including interview guides for virtual interviews with former youth editors and the online youth survey methodology. For sensitive topics, precautions were taken to ensure that the content and word choices avoided causing harm. The approach aligned with Article One’s Ethical Research Principles, including securing consent from both guardians and youth for all engagement with those under 18.

Article One consolidated the findings from the first three steps, analyzed them in line with the UNGPs severity test, identified gaps in the Foundation’s and the broader Wikimedia movement’s current approach to management and oversight, and developed a series of recommendations for the Wikimedia Foundation to mitigate adverse risks to children and promote child rights related to its free knowledge projects in conjunction with the broader Wikimedia movement.

It is important to note that the public version of this report is a joint effort between Article One and the Wikimedia Foundation, based on a full CRIA independently conducted by Article One and submitted to the Foundation in March 2023. As with all impact assessments it remains a snapshot in time, highlighting child rights risks and corresponding management practices from 2023, when this report was finalized and submitted. It does not include actions the Foundation or the Wikimedia movement has taken or additional risks that may have materialized since the assessment was submitted. Article One and the Wikimedia Foundation jointly edited this public version of the report to protect the safety and security of Foundation staff and the larger volunteer community.

Rightsholders

Recognizing that the way in which children engage with Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects can impact the potential risk and opportunities, Article One grouped children into three categories of rightsholders:

1. Volunteer Editors. Volunteers who contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by adding content to or editing pages. Anyone, including children, can be volunteers.
2. In-person Participants. Volunteers who attend in-person events hosted by formal independent organizations that the Foundation recognizes and sometimes provides grants to as affiliates (e.g., Wikimania, Wiki clubs) and informal gatherings (e.g., in school and meetups among volunteers) in accordance with their own policies and applicable national laws.
3. General Public. Children who read content on Wikimedia projects, and who are subjects of articles, photographs, and other content on the free knowledge projects.

Child Rights Opportunities

Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects provide many actual and potential benefits to children, as editors, participants of in-person events and programming, and as consumers and subjects of Wikimedia project pages.

Volunteer Editors
Notably, volunteer editors of all ages are welcome to contribute to Wikimedia projects, to create reliably sourced, verifiable, encyclopedic content on issues that they are interested in and care about, thereby facilitating their right to freely express themselves (CRC 13). Contributions from children and adults are weighted equally. Both are expected to adhere to Wikipedia’s robust editing policies and practices to ensure that content remains verifiable and based on reliable sources. This process of editing contributes to advancing children’s right to education (CRC 28) and helps them realize their right to information (CRC 13), equipping them with important skills, including sourcing, creating citations, internet research, and the ability to critically evaluate information. These skills can also prepare young people for future careers, with the potential to positively impact their right to an adequate standard of living (CRC 27).

Beyond the educational benefits, as host to 335 different language projects, including Indigenous and other endangered languages, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects facilitate children belonging to minority and Indigenous groups’ right to access, participate in, and enjoy culture, cultural heritage, and cultural expressions (CRC 30). Wikimedia knowledge projects can also have positive mental health and developmental impacts on young editors (CRC 24), particularly those who may struggle with social isolation and benefit from connecting with peers and others who share their interests and challenges.

In-Person Participants
Wikimedia positively advances children’s rights to meet and join groups and organizations (CRC 15) through the Foundation, affiliates, and informal community in- person events programming. For instance, meetups, whether organized formally or informally by the affiliates or community generally, can help young people meet up with their peers and foster meaningful connections. They can also help children belonging to a minority or Indigenous group to realize their right to cultural participation (CRC 30). For instance, in the past, the Wikimania conference, a global annual event with hundreds of sessions on a wide range of global topics relating to Wikimedia, dedicated a session to specifically recognize the contributions of African youth, and their cultural heritage. Wiki clubs and camps, which can be organized by Wikimedia affiliates, also bring together students to learn how to contribute to Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects, while having fun with friends. For example, the Armenia chapter has organized summer Wikicamps for students ages 9-15.

General Public
For children who read content on Wikimedia projects, these free knowledge projects help to realize their rights to information (CRC 13) and education (CRC 28). Specifically, Wikipedia has become a significant source of information, as the seventh most accessed site in the world, with more than 61 million articles in more than 300 languages. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects receive more than 20 billion page views each month. Some studies reveal that students use Wikipedia to assist them in their school work, and as an easy to use, fast, and accessible source of information. Wikipedia is also one of the most frequently visited resources for health information on the Internet, providing general information about physical and mental health, and relevant services for children. Notably, this information is available to all children with access to the Internet (and in more limited cases, with little or no Internet access), regardless of income level.

Salient Risks to Child Rights

Salient risks are the human rights that are at risk of the most severe negative impacts through an organization’s activities or business relationships. This assessment focuses on the potential risks to children through their engagement with Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects.

The benefits provided to child rights should be considered against the potential risks the Wikimedia platforms and related spaces may pose to children, online and through in-person engagements. Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBPs), Wikimedia and its platforms should avoid infringing on children’s rights and address any adverse impacts on children’s rights with which it is involved. The potential risks of Wikimedia projects and the associated rights for each group are summarized in the tables below, beginning with the highest risks for each rightsholder category. Details about the impacted rights, level of risk, and Wikimedia’s relationship to harm are covered in the main body of this report, along with recommendations for each salient risk identified. Details of existing policies in place to tackle these risks are also included later in the report.

Risks to Volunteer Editors

Risk: Harmful contact and child exploitation (CRC 34)

Harmful contact includes grooming children to perform sexual acts online or offline and to access them as potential customers for illegal products. Initial contact may occur through the public talk pages on Wikimedia projects and then migrate to platforms hosted by other companies, as there are no chat and private messaging functions within Wikimedia’s infrastructure. Children may also be manipulated or pressured into editing and creating content on behalf of governments or malign actors.

Risk: Threats to personal security and safety (CRC 19)

Child editors may be at risk of being targeted by states or malign actors who seek to control the public information space. There has only been one known incident - which has not been directly linked to involvement in a Wikimedia project - involving the child of an adult editor being exposed to danger, but there is still the possibility of children being directly targeted, particularly in conflict-affected and authoritarian regimes where online activity can result in arrest or detention.

Risk: Lack of voice in the movement (CRC 3 and 12)

While there have long been efforts to enhance children’s engagement with Wikimedia projects, such as community-led education and youth-focused programs and the Wikipedia Education Program, opportunities for children’s voices and perspectives to be heard across the movement are still limited. This puts the Foundation at greater risk of designing projects and programming, as well as funding community-led initiatives, that do not take into consideration the best interest of the child.

Risk: Infringement on the right to privacy (CRC 16)

Privacy risks arise primarily from a young contributor’s unintentional or voluntary public disclosure of personal information on the public platforms hosted by the Foundation. There is also the risk that children are not aware of Wikipedia’s relevant privacy policies and practices or of online safety strategies for limiting the public sharing of personal information.

Risk: Discrimination and non-equity (CRC 2)

Children, like adults, may be discriminated against by receiving hateful communications or unfair treatment on the platform, primarily on the public talk pages, or by being deterred from using digital technologies and services.

Risk: Harassment and bullying (CRC 19)

Harm to children in the digital environment can manifest in several ways, including bullying and threats to reputation. A Pew Research Center study found that 90% of teens surveyed in the U.S. believe that online harassment is a problem that affects people their age. Children may also be harassed for their political, social, cultural, or religious views by states or state-like entities. Such harms may occur when discussing shared work on Wikimedia projects with other editors, or when engagement on Wikimedia projects can be traced back to an individual.

Risk: Exposure to harmful content (CRC 19)

A child may be exposed to unwelcome and inappropriate content on the platform. Content that may be classified as “harmful” on pages of Wikimedia projects include bloody or violent images (e.g., medical images), content detailing self-harm or eating disorders, hateful or racist speech, pornography, sexually explicit images, and child sexual abuse material. This exposure risk is heightened for editors who volunteer to remove “vandalism” from Wikimedia projects due to their higher degree of exposure to content that needs to be removed under existing Foundation and/or community policies across the public platforms.

Risk: Inadequate access to remedy (UDHR 8)

A young editor on Wikipedia or other knowledge projects may find it challenging to navigate the different community- run and developed reporting mechanisms and identify the appropriate one to use. This can impact the ability to access effective remedy.

Risks to In-Person Participants

Risk: Best interest of the child not considered (CRC 13)

Without the proper resources and training, independent third parties who have contact with children, through activities funded through Wikimedia Foundation grants for example, may not be equipped to appropriately consider the best interests of the child. For instance, at one independent affiliate event, the organization’s leaders brought in army members to do military style exercises with children, resulting in its suspension until new leadership was elected.

Risk: Child sexual exploitation (CRC 34)

While attending in-person events hosted by Wikimedia affiliates or informal community events, children may be at risk of harmful contact, including grooming. Children and young people who are groomed can be sexually abused, exploited, or trafficked.

Risk: Privacy infringement (CRC 16)

Children’s privacy may be infringed if the policies and procedures employed at in-person events are not privacy conscious. Specifically, children’s data, including personal information, may be collected and stored improperly during the registration process for an event.

Risk: Harmful contact, including bullying and harassment (CRC 19)

There is a risk that children face bullying and harassment at in-person meet-ups and events. This risk is potentially higher for informal community meetups that occur, for instance with participants of local user groups, where there may be fewer safeguards in place or in more restrictive environments where governments could engage in targeted activity.

Risk: Inaccessibility and inequity (CRC 2)

In-person events hosted by Wikimedia affiliates and informal groups may not always be accessible to children for various reasons, inhibiting their rights to express their views and assemble.

Risks to the General Public

Risk: Exposure to harmful content and misrepresentation of facts (CRC 13, 27, 19)

The spread of mis/disinformation affects everyone online and offline, but because of their evolving capacities, children, in particular, cannot always distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information. As a result, they can both be harmed by mis/disinformation, as well as spread it among their peers.

Risk: Privacy infringement and risk to reputation (CRC 16)

Given their young age, children have a right to additional privacy protections and protections against adverse impacts on their reputation. The risk to privacy is higher for children who are subjects of Wikipedia articles or photographs in Wikimedia Commons, such as child activists and celebrities.

Risk: Child sexual abuse material (CRC 34, UDHR 1)

Child sexual abuse material directly infringes on the right to be treated with dignity and to be protected from exploitation. While Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) has been found on Wikipedia, it is very rare.

Recommendations

Wikimedia has taken a critical step in respecting children’s rights by conducting a CRIA.

Having identified children as active participants in Wikimedia’s community, and recognizing the unique risks faced by children, Wikimedia can work with community members to develop policies and practices to address surfaced risks, in addition to strengthening existing policies. In addition to the risk-specific recommendations presented for each stakeholder group, the recommendations below are intended to support Wikimedia’s broader child safety efforts and identify opportunities where Wikimedia can have an even greater positive impact on children.

1. Develop and implement a child safeguarding policy, approach to ongoing child rights due diligence, and assign ownership of child rights within the Foundation.

   A child safeguarding policy should provide a framework for ensuring the best interests of the child by the Foundation and the Wikimedia volunteer community. As the responsible person for overseeing ongoing child rights due diligence, as well as training and capacity building for community members and Wikimedia staff, a designated child safeguarding lead will ensure that child protection is prioritized throughout the organization and in its engagement with the ecosystem it supports.

2. Develop a child-friendly complaints and reporting mechanism, along with appropriate internal staffing, resourcing, and internal systems to process complaints.

   Wikimedia should work with community members to create an escalation process for those who identify as children within the draft Private Incident Reporting System (PRIS), as well as develop a child-friendly version of the reporting system, to directly respond to young user’s concerns and unique needs.

3. Evaluate the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy through a child rights lens.

   A working group could be established to consider how the recommendations of the 2030 strategy are incorporating children’s rights, and where there are gaps that may require additional support.

4. Engage child rights experts and partner with other organizations working on supporting child rights online.

   Partner with organizations focused on the digital rights and safety of children to provide Wikimedia with additional resources, expertise, and independent guidance on how the Foundation can advance its approach to child rights. Organizational units that may be best suited to lead these partnerships within the Foundation include Global Advocacy, Human Rights, Trust & Safety, and Legal.

5. Empower children to protect themselves by providing child-friendly resources and tools.

   The community-developed Universal Code of Conduct and the Foundation’s Terms of Use are not tailored to support ease of comprehension for children nor designed to accommodate how children engage online. Wikimedia should partner with the community to develop distinct approaches for relaying information to children and create tools and reporting mechanisms that are easily accessible to children.

6. Integrate children’s voices into Wikimedia’s approach to design, including through their direct participation.

   Children should have the opportunity to identify and describe the challenges they may face interacting with Wikimedia projects, as well as provide recommendations for how to make improvements that will advance children’s user experience. This could be accomplished by establishing a Child Rights Council or Youth Council that is composed primarily of children, to ensure that they can contribute directly to the Foundation’s strategy and by deepening engagements with children through school programs and initiatives focused on advancing children’s rights online.

7. Develop a proactive and rights-compatible approach to engaging on regulation that affects children’s rights.

   Wikimedia has the opportunity to help shape the regulatory environment affecting children’s rights online. As a leading player, with the trust of civil society, Wikimedia can help ensure that regulation is developed in a rights-respecting way with outcomes that benefit children.