Netherlands hosts largest share of global child sexual abuse material

Recent research shows that the Netherlands is responsible for hosting over 60% of CSAM in Western Europe and about one-third of the world’s total. The Childlight platform wrote that this hosting exacerbates a state of emergency and destroys the lives of millions of children worldwide.

CSAM refers to any visual content depicting children under 18 sexually, including photos, videos, digital media, or computer-generated images. The term emphasizes that this content documents abuse.

A new report from the Global Child Safety Institute Childlight, based at the University of Edinburgh, indicates that the Netherlands is the world’s largest host, responsible for 30% of all CSAM globally.

These findings have prompted Childlight and the Dutch child rights NGO Terre des Hommes Netherlands to call on members of the Dutch Parliament, participating in the upcoming general elections, to commit to strong and actionable measures to tackle this crisis.

They warn that children across Europe and the world suffer due to widespread access to CSAM, and that strong legislation and enforcement could significantly reduce online abuse content globally.

The annual Childlight index on global child exploitation and sexual abuse calculates the level of access to CSAM in countries across Western Europe and South Asia, based on data from INHOPE and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which track this issue.

This rate considers both the amount of abuse content in a country (based on the server location hosting CSAM globally) and the number of reports of this content per capita.

The index shows that the Netherlands, with 880.9 reports per 10,000 people (based on 2024 data), has the highest level of child sexual abuse material in Western Europe. Following the Netherlands are Slovakia with 193.7, Lithuania with 190, and Luxembourg with 186.3.

In South Asia, the highest rates are in the Maldives at 94 and Bangladesh at 64.1. The UK ranks 12th among 34 Western European countries with 41.8 reports per 10,000 people, while San Marino ranks lowest with 5.4 reports.

The study also found that nearly one in five children in Western Europe reported experiencing unwanted or pressured sexual interactions online (referred to as online solicitation) before turning 18.

Furthermore, by the age of 18, 2.5% of children in Western Europe experienced taking and sharing sexual images or videos of children, known as CSAM or image-based sexual abuse (IBSA). The report indicated that 2.2% of Western European children reported such harm in the past year. Meanwhile, it is estimated that one in 15 children has been exposed to this type of material before 18, and one in five children in the past year has encountered unwanted sexual content online.

Childlight emphasizes that the scale of CSAM hosted on servers in the Netherlands has far-reaching implications beyond a domestic issue, activating criminal networks, increasing demand for abuse, and weakening child protection efforts across Europe.