This year’s INHOPE Annual General Meeting – during which the new INHOPE Board of Directors was elected for the next two years – took place on 22 July 2020. Peter-Paul Urlaub, Consultant in the eco Complaints Office, was again elected to the INHOPE board: In his new function as treasurer, he now manages the finances of INHOPE and thus makes an important contribution to the further development of the organisation.
The new INHOPE Board of Directors is composed as follows:
– President: Jean-Christophe Le Toquin (Point de Contact, France)
– Vice President: Toby Dagg (The eSafety Commissioner, Australia)
– Treasurer: Peter-Paul Urlaub (eco Association, Germany)
– Member responsible for Matters of the INHOPE foundation: Carolina Piñeros (Red PaPaz – Te Protejo, Colombia)
– Members without portfolio: Sean Lyons (Netsafe, New Zealand) and Þora Jónsdóttir (Save the Children Iceland, Iceland)
In 1999, eco, together with seven other organizations and with support from the European Commission’s “Action Plan on promoting safer use of the Internet”, founded the “International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE)”, the international umbrella organization of Internet complaints hotlines which operate worldwide and receive complaints about illegal content (especially depictions of sexual abuse of minors) on the Internet.
For more than 20 years now, the network has been working successfully to ensure that depictions of abuse of minors are effectively combated through international cooperation. The network now consists of more than 45 complaints hotlines in over 40 countries. Through this, reports of illegal online content can be transmitted to the partner responsible in each case, which leads to the rapid take-down of the content. This allows for the distribution of illegal content to be investigated in its country of origin, which is also beneficial for law enforcement. The expertise of the complaints hotlines is regularly collated in best practices, and compliance with these is regularly reviewed.
