gisw13_chapters

BOLIVIAPreventing digital violence in schoolsREDES FoundationJosé Eduardo Rojaswww.fundacionredes.orgIntroductionBetween 20 September and 15 November 2012,a total of 1,121 students from nine schools weretrained in 40 workshops on the prevention of digitalviolence. The workshops were held in the municipalitiesof Cercado, Tiquipaya and Colcapirhua inthe department of Cochabamba. The content wasdeveloped by experts in internet governance fromthe REDES Foundation, who were inspired by theimportance of educating new generations in theoverall uses of the internet, in order for them toexercise their human rights as well as reduce riskbehaviours online.In order to carry out the workshops, it was importantto develop an introductory methodologyfor schools that do not have experience, policiesor activities to prevent or deal with crimes on thenet. Diagnostic visits showed that schools lack adequatetechnology, infrastructure and connectivity,which greatly hampers learning processes usingthe internet. Overall, teachers under the age of 30show greater interest towards this subject; on theother hand, parents have shown a great disregardand ignorance about the risks and vulnerability oftheir children online. We used online educationalvideo games with free software, 1 using a mobileconnection from the REDES Foundation.Cyber crime and digital violence common inBoliviaThe REDES Foundation is now opening up a new fieldfor work and research, which we are certain is of interestto Bolivia and Latin America. There is a fine linebetween computer crimes related to legal conceptswhich are formally criminalised in domestic law, and“digital violence” which is not recognised or penalised,but is affecting many people.Bolivia does not have a specific legal frameworkto criminalise and punish cyber crimes. Moreover,1 www.cuidatuimagenonline.comthere is no institutional capacity to deal with them,because in late 2008 the Special Force AgainstCrime shut down the Computer Crimes Division.There is a lack of specialised judges and trainedpersonnel in the judicial system. Moreover, in thepublic sector, there is also a lack of trained personnelin the Office of the Ombudsman for Children andAdolescents, the Family Protection Brigades andthe Municipal Comprehensive Services. Overall,there is a complete lack of knowledge among Bolivianschools, teachers, parents and students on howto deal with different forms of digital violence.The core of the problem is that, whether we seeit as a crime (in legal terms) or as digital violence(in social terms), we are dealing with the violationof human rights of various groups of the Bolivianpopulation, particularly women, girls, boys, teenagers,young and sexually diverse populations.Since 2010 the REDES Foundation has raised theawareness of the Bolivian public, denouncing theoffences being committed against students over theinternet and other internet-related problems, suchas phishing, hacking, pornography, child pornography,lolicon 2 and shotacon, 3 sexting, grooming, thetrafficking of personal images, internet addictionand plagiarism, among others. 4During the 2012 workshops, we noted that theonline rights violations occurred because peopleengaged in the following “digital risk behaviours”:a) placing a positive value on having large numbersof contacts on social networks, even if they arestrangers; b) considering the mobile phone as aneffective device to control people (family members,partners, employees), to the point that it is beingused for harassment and dependency through SMSand calling; c) considering the searching of personalaccount information, emails and social networkactivity as a common practice; d) having a selfperceptionof utter vulnerability to harassment andanonymous messaging (“can’t do anything aboutit”); e) exposure to violent video games and interactivedigital content; f) tagging and indiscriminateuse of the images on other peoples’ social networks2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon3 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotacon4 www.enredomino.fundacionredes.org73 / Global Information Society Watch