The role of the global network to remove Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) online is a substantial responsibility. With 52 hotlines and more than 200 content analysts from Africa to Asia and Latin America, we continue to prioritise support to organisations in the most vulnerable regions, where we know we need to set up hotlines to support the region and share essential knowledge and experience. Get your digital copy of the INHOPE Annual report, to learn more about our highlights and achievements over the past year.

INHOPE’s Impact a brief look at 2022

• 587.852 content URLs of potentially illegal and harmful material depicting child sexual abuse and exploitation were exchanged on the INHOPE platform ICCAM.
• 68% of CSAM was reported to law enforcement and 26% was taken down on the same day.
• INHOPE entered the implementation of its 2022-2024 strategy in 2022, focusing on its six main strategic pillars.
• 11 Quality Assurance reviews were conducted - all 11 hotlines earned the INHOPE Quality Assurance Certificate.
• INHOPE organised 24 training and capacity-building events.
• A total of 189 analysts were trained by INHOPE in 2022.
• INHOPE organised 11 successful exchanges between hotline analysts all over the world who got to meet their international peers, share their best practices and discuss the most pressing problems.
• Two Hotline Training Meetings took place in 2022 with more than 70 participants from INHOPE member hotlines.
• INHOPE welcomed 7 new colleagues into the INHOPE secretariat.
• The ESCAPE project, funded by the End Violence Against Children Fund, enabled us to set up hotlines in Serbia and Albania, and we are currently in the process of setting up a new hotline in Moldova. We are now a network of 50 hotlines, of which 48 are full members.

"With 24 capacity-building events in 2022, the focus has been on ensuring content analysts are equipped to tackle CSAM." - Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, INHOPE President

Trends and Statistics

• Girls remain the primary victims of CSAM, with 91% of reports depicting girls, and 7% showing the abuse of boys. 2% of reported content includes both male and female victims, meaning multiple children are in a reported image or video.
• 9 in 10 victims depicted were between 3 and 12 years old with 1% of victims in the infant category (0-2 years), including babies as young as 4 months old.
• For most victims depicted in the 3-13 years category, a contributing factor is self-generated content.
• 84% of CSAM reports were of never seen before material, depicting new and known child victims of sexual abuse.
• 68% of 529.095 reports exchanged in ICCAM were classified as illegal, compared to 48% in 2021.
• As in previous years, INHOPE hotlines continue to report that CSAM is mostly found on websites, files, and image hosts, with image hosts, making up 38%, compared to 25% in 2021. File hosting platforms dropped from 26% of CSAM in 2021 to 6%.
• In 2022, hotlines analysts have observed the rise of Child Abuse Pyramid Sites (CAP Sites), a new type of commercial site which uses a particular form of “invitation” system to access CSAM content. Users are encouraged to share their personal links to invite external people to the site to acquire "points" that can be used to pay for CSAM.

"INHOPE began the first full year implementation of the 2022-2024 strategic plan, which is delivered via six organisational pillars: network expansion, strategic communications, capacity building, sustainability, innovation, and organisational excellence. As you will see in this report all of INHOPE’s activities and outputs were aligned and delivered in accordance with the 2022 strategic plan and driven by a focus on People & Technology." - Denton Howard, Executive Director, INHOPE

Highlights of the Report

• INHOPE launched the Global Standard project in June 2022 with a successful First Focus Group in Amsterdam, attended by key representatives of hotlines, law enforcement agencies and industry partners.
• We continued the Second Phase of the AviaTor project, together with its project partners: the National Police of the Netherlands, the Federal Police of Belgium, the German Institute for Artificial Intelligence, ZiuZ Forensics, Web-IQ and the new addition and legal support from Timelex.
• Better Internet for Kids Programme: Phase 4 continued in 2022 with successful coordination of the European network of hotlines, the organisation of Hotline Training Meetings and Focus Groups. As part of this programme, INHOPE ensures high-quality standards and participates in the celebration of the Safer Internet Day with organisations from around the world.
• This year, we received a grant from Google. Under this project, INHOPE held two regional INTERPOL trainings. The first was held in Mexico City in April with more than 25 attendees from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico, and the second was held in Singapore with more than 14 attendees from Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal, Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea.
• Annual funding partnerships directly support INHOPE’s work and in 2022 we were thrilled to welcome Tether, Twitch, Grayshift, Amazon, and Zepeto Naver-Z.
• Our Network Expansion team held over 80 online meetings with organisations looking to set up a hotline and participated in roundtables in Mexico, Colombia, Slovakia, Nepal, Thailand, and Cambodia.
• INHOPE and INTERPOL organised four Content Assessment Trainings. Two of them (Mexico and Singapore) combined training and regional meetings. Participants from numerous countries in South America and Asia explored how to strengthen regional cooperation.
• INHOPE started implementing “Stronger Together,” supporting our operational activities, funded by the European Union Directorate-General Justice and Consumers through the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme.
• INHOPE launched "Shaping the Story," a campaign designed to address appropriate media portrayals of child sexual abuse (CSA) and CSAM. The campaign included an overview of media guidelines for respectful reporting on abuse.
• Nine Expert Insights webinars on various online safety topics were held and brought together 1030 participants.
• 300+ experts from around the world gathered at the INHOPE Summit 2022 to push against the boundaries of child sexual abuse.

Our goal is to expand to all continents so that every country has a hotline, and everyone knows how to report CSAM online. We do this while engaging, teaching, nurturing and growing our existing network of more than 200 hotline analysts around the world. And we continue to support our members through sharing knowledge, expertise and best practices. In tackling this task, we must never forget our motivation and core goal: to support and protect the victims of CSAM.