Protecting Children's Rights facing artificial intelligence: the Coalition for children's rights and protection in the age of Artificial intelligence as an Operational Tool

Generating images. Analyze the test. Create a chronogram. Brainstorming ideas. And you get your answer in like three seconds. It helps us, but it also complicates some factors. Because many times we look for a news story and that news story can be false. but it can also be true. AI can provide misinformation with a really good confidence and make you believe in it. I always cross-check the information that AI provides me.

A partir do momento em que a gente se deixa levar pela IA, acho que ela pode afetar, sim, o nosso pensamento crítico e a nossa criatividade.

See, my brain just automatically goes, let's use AI because you're used to this now.

I feel guilty using AI sometimes because I just don't think it's the right thing morally to do.

AI should empower the youth, but it should not demolish or decrease their creativity, thinking, and humanity.

One thing that makes knowledge so beautiful and ignites curiosity in students is that human connection that teachers provide. Teachers have like a personality and like they have, they can have humor and I don't think that should be replaced by any non-living thing.

Mein has taught me to use artificial intelligence. I try to use it, I try to understand what it is, and then slowly, by using it more often, constantly, and daily, I start to master what this new entity is.

Just say me, could match, got questions, you make us a machine, I thought that, woman, AI, say, push, did you do AI in the very, what help, Karina?

Generating images. Analyze the test. Create a chronogram of the study. Brainstorming ideas. And you get your answer in like three seconds. It helps us, but it also complicates some factors. Because many times we look for a news story, and that news story can be false. But AI can provide misinformation with a really good confidence and make you believe in it. I always cross-check the information.

Heads of state and government. Madame President of the Commission, heads of international organizations, ministers, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends. Thank you, first of all. for being here today. And also allow me to thank the young people we just heard from, because they, at their core, remind us of what's truly important. I believe that we're all convinced here that a civilization is always defined by what it chooses to pass on to its children, and by what it allows them to inherit in order to take their place in the world, and by what it protects them from. That is what childhood is about, the time when we learn to grow up, to become citizens by receiving from others the words to understand the world and the confidence to venture into it. But for the first time, the technology enters the heart of this learning with the ability to speak, respond, remember, and even mimic signs of attention or affection. And as a matter of fact, our common experience is that over the past few years, we allowed social networks to get into the daily lives of our children. And this is very much what this initiative is about. And allow me to commend the role played by Australia when adopting this bill in order to protect children and teenagers. And then with Pedro and a few others, we launched a similar movement in Europe. And I would like to thank President von der Leyen, who announced a few days ago. a new regulation in order to protect children and teenagers from social networks with a very specific and efficient system, and I will not get into the details of it. But the lesson we should keep in mind is that it took us 10 years to do so, and for 10 years we let our children, our teenagers, live in a system that we knew hardly anything about. And we were not so much questioning the fact that they were growing with something we didn't really know whether it was meant for them. And as a matter of fact, we found out that it was not meant for them. And the OECD, once again, showed it with the PISA ratings. We saw not Children would spend sometimes four to five hours on the social networks. And we've seen as well an epidemic of health issues, mental health issues, obesity and others that are clearly connected to these social networks. So we have to put in place a strategy at the European level and with all like-minded countries. And this is the reason why Australia is here and Kenya will be joining us as well. And we've been building this cooperation in order to take action. And this matter of fact, the challenge for us is to acknowledge that AI is here. And shall we wait for another 10 years and repeat the same mistakes? I believe we should not. And the very purpose of that coalition that we put together is to acknowledge that artificial intelligence, which is more and more present in our lives and enabling us to innovate, to increase productivity. And we see now the risks as well. We all want frontier models and the risks, embarked risks as well that come with it. But AI is here and it's already part of the life of our children. All of your children or teenagers who use WhatsApp and other systems, they have a chat box. on AI and it is sometimes pretending to be a friend, answering their concerns, their anxiety, so it is impacting their development. And that is true for many networks that are using AI and more and more of these. And I believe we certainly do not want to repeat the mistakes that we made in relation to social networks. So we need to assess these models and better protect our children. So the purpose of our coalition is to consider that no AI should be put in the hands of our children without prior assessment, authorization, and we need to act. And such is the mission of our coalition. It is about making this responsibility a reality and making sure we can assess it thanks to the use of the UN, the governments, the scientists, the academics, making sure that everything is organized based on the rights of the children. So we need an independent assessment of these models. It's very important, I believe, and we shall make sure that we certainly do not say that an AI model is good and can be in the hands of our children without assessing it. So we need to understand how these models develop and build precisely the proper answers in the cultures, different languages, cultures and educational contexts. So the purpose of that meeting is very much to mobilize this coalition that was put together in July in Geneva. And I would like this meeting today to give us an opportunity to provided with a mandate. And I also suggest that we use in November the Paris Peace Forum in order to try and build some more concrete elements and and provide some very concrete answers. And I would like to thank the UN agencies that are represented here today and so mobilized, as well as all the governments attending. And we need to involve everyone, including the academic stakeholders and businesses. When an AI gets into the life of a child, its provider shall have the obligation to demonstrate the benefits it claims and to allow for an independent assessment of its risks, taking into account the child's age, the intended use, and the context. Without further ado, went, I meant to make this introduction, we shall learn from what happened with the social networks and move much more quickly on when it comes to AI. I will now leave the floor to my co-chairs of the coalition, the Prime Ministers, dear Pedro and dear Antoni.

It is a pleasure for me to inaugurate the session along with my colleagues, Emmanuel and Antony. I think that the risks of artificial intelligence have lived in our imaginations for years. In 2001, in the Space Odyssey, we met HAL, that computer that was created to help human beings, until one day that computer refuses to obey and says, "I'm sorry, Dave. I regret I'm not able to do that. Now, before artificial intelligence is able to overpower our capacity to control it, I think we have to respond and say, I'm sorry, AI, we can't allow you to do that. There must be limits, regulations. We must protect that which makes us human. During years, artificial intelligence has been the source of much hope. That's been debated here, of course, that it would allow us to cure diseases, create more prosperous societies. And some say that we are at the threshold of a period of abundancy. But today we are able to identify its risks. A small group of techno oligarchs is defining values, preferences, models, and this technology is worsening issues related to cyber abuse, hate, the loss of privacy, anxiety, etc. And these aren't just risks that we've identified in reports. They come from those who develop the most advanced AI models. If they themselves are warning us about these risks, I think that all of us here have the obligation to respond and to pay heed, particularly when those risks are Addressing those who have the least tools to defend themselves, as the President of the French Republic has said, our children, our youth. I will just share some statistics now so that we can truly visualize this challenge that we're facing. European youth spend up to six hours, six hours a day before a screen, one out of every three adolescents. recognize that they encounter inappropriate content to be politically correct. At the same time, the last piece of report from the OECD, as Emmanuel mentioned, sees a decrease in education due to the use of artificial intelligence. And there is even a more concerning statistic here that has moved me. The material of sexual abuse material with children increased from 5,000 cases detected in 2023, 5,000, to 1.3 million, 1.3 million of child online sexual abuse cases in 2025. A digital world without rules is a jungle, a failed state, and that is why all of us here have the obligation and the responsibility to do more. In Spain, as many of the governments here, we have put childhood protection at the center of our digital agenda. We have supported the creation of this forum in the United Nations for the protection of Children's Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. And this coalition is one of the first tangible results when it comes to the governance of AI that was approved last year during the General Assembly in the United Nations when we launched the Expert Panel on Artificial Intelligence. We've inspired ourselves on the case of France and Australia, and we've raised the minimum age to 16 years for social media. We've also activated parental controls. And thank you to the leadership of the European Commission. The European Union has been able to include the prohibition of sexual deepfakes without consent and sexual abuse material, including children, that's generated by artificial intelligence. In the case of Spain, we've been one of the first countries to develop a system to verify age based on the digital ID system at the EU level, and we have some of our collaborators for this idea. I would like to conclude by saying something very simple to those techno-oligarchs. Our children are more important than your business. Our daughters and our sons are more important than your business. The companies must be responsible for the impact that they have on youth, as do many other companies. They can't just privatize services. and socialized loss, particularly when discussing the mental health of our children. I think that it is possible to recover the hope that we have in the future of technology, and I hope that we can do so. I truly do so. But there must be clear limits, responsibility, cooperation, and artificial intelligence should work in favor of humanity, never against it. So we need a national, regional, global response, an alliance between governments, companies, educators, families. One year ago, it was unthinkable to impose a minimum age limit to enter social media or chat with a chat box. But today, this is a proposal that's on the table thanks to the European Commission and thanks to countries such as Spain and France that have moved this forward along with other countries. And now we ask the United Nations that the protection of our children also inspire us We must continue to move forward the rights of children, and this is the challenge that calls us all, nothing more, nothing less. But dear Emmanuel, dear Anthony, I am also truly happy to belong to this group and coalition.

Well, thank you very much, and I'm very honoured to share the stage here with my good friends Emmanuel and Pedro. And thank you to Emmanuel for acknowledging Australia's leading role in this. We came here last year having passed our legislation just in 2024 to ban social media for under-16s. And the truth is that it wasn't government led. It was government responding to parents. Parents like Emma Mason, who came with us as part of our delegation to the United Nations last year, who had lost her beautiful young daughter, Tilly. There are too many parents who have lost their sons and daughters in the most extreme examples of the impact of social media. and the power of drama that was the Adolescents program produced in the UK highlighted the fact that people did not know what was going on when a bedroom door was shut. We all try and keep our children safe. We keep them safe when they're on the street, when they're going to and from school, but the truth is that most hurt is caught with these things, behind closed doors. And that is why we needed to respond and to act. We have since then, just two weeks ago, strengthened further the power of our eSafety Commissioner to demand, as a matter of law, further information from the social media organisations to make sure that they comply with the law, and we've doubled the fines of up to $100 million for every breach of it. Because whilst it's been successful in 6 million accounts of young Australians being shut down, we want to make sure that it empowers parents and indeed empowers as well our eSafety Commissioner to take action. The truth is that it's been very well received by parents because it's enabled, whilst some children, as we said when we introduced the legislation, young people are smart. Some of them will work out ways to get around technology, but we couldn't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. And we know that the impact of social media has led to an increase in mental health issues. It's leading to an addiction to algorithms and scrolling. It's leading to further anxieties, eating disorders and behavioural issues, which is essentially robbing children of their childhood. And we want to give it back to them. We want children to learn how to interact with each other face to face, rather than to think their best friend is a bot or a non-existent production of AI online. We want people to be able to communicate as an essential part of growing up. And hence the ban for under 16s was directed towards enabling them to have the maturity as they grow older, being able as well to encourage them to play sport, to do normal things on the weekend. And I can say to you that the educational outcomes are better. the banning very early on of devices in schools has led to increased concentration in the classroom, less disruption. It's leading to an increase as well in young people playing sport after school rather than going home and getting on their devices. We have foreshadowed the next stage of legislation. which is to have, we call it My Feed My Way. And that is legislation that will enable people of any age to be able to control whether they want the algorithms to come through on their devices or not, or whether they can choose to just receive the feeds of people who they follow and to be in charge. the criticism of this legislation is not surprising, that this is about government control. It is the opposite of that. It is about giving everyone control over their own lives. and it's an inevitable next stage, because whilst today we're concentrating on the impact on children, the truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions, with misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we're seeing as well in the political system, where people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right. And that is why we think that this is a very positive move that we're being put forward. And on Saturday, I stopped off in Silicon Valley and met with Tim Cook from Apple. I must say it was a great example and really heartening to see what they are doing with their systems that will introduce parental controls, allowing a banning of devices from social media, but also allowing the controls which are at their fingertips of how long people can look at games or look at particular items, what times they can use their device, how long they can use it for during the day. All of these controls can be done. When we first proposed a social media ban, they said, oh, we can't tell how old people are. The truth is that some of these companies, like Meta, have more information about young people than their parents do. That is the truth of the matter. They have been able to comply, and they should comply. In July, I also announced the third part of our legislation, which we will do by the end of this year, which is Australian standards for AI. Artificial intelligence can bring great good. It can boost our economies, it can boost productivity, it can have health breakthroughs, it can improve educational outcomes, but only if humans are in control of it, only if there is appropriate regulation. And that is something that not just governments are saying, or some people in some governments, something the companies themselves are saying, warning of the risks. So we need to shape the technology rather than allow the technology to shape us. I have no doubt that we can meet these challenges, that we can shape the use of new technology which has emancipated so much of our work and activity from hard labour tasks. There are many benefits from technology. But we need to make sure, as Pope Leo has said in his encyclical as well, the theme of making sure that humans are always in control, our humanity. For all of our faults is part of what makes us human, the idea. As some have argued, that AI will create perfection. is something that is, I think, very misdirected. So we do have the power, we have the agency, but importantly as well, we have the choice. But the choices that we make as leaders will determine what happens for the next year and decade. Because if we leave it like, I think, We did on social media, as Pedro and Emmanuel have both said as well. We should have moved earlier. Let's not make the same mistake. Let's learn from it and make sure that we shape AI in the interests of humanity. Thank you.

Thank you, Anthony.

And now I give the floor to William Ruto.

Thank you for joining us, William. You co-chair this coalition and this initiative, and it's great to have you here. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Your Excellency Macron, President of France. I want to thank all the other colleagues that have spoken before me. Kenya is honored to be a founding member of this coalition, alongside France and Spain. We have worked with the European Union, the United Nations system, and our partners to reach this very important moment. I recognize the UNICEF, UNESCO, ITU, researchers, civil society, the private sector, and above all, the children and young people whose voices have helped shape the roadmap to this launch today. We move from shared concern to practical action, guided by one clear conviction: no child should have to choose between being connected and being safe. Excellencies, Africa Forward in Nairobi was an important milestone. At the summit in May 2026, the First Lady of Kenya convened a high-level dialogue bringing together governments, technology companies, international organizations, civil society, and much more importantly, children. The children were clear. They want technology to learn, to create, and to participate. They expect governments and technology companies to provide safeguards, and they expect a voice in decision about the technologies shaping their lives. That conversation strengthened the case for African cooperation. Kenya supports the Africa Task Force on Child Online Protection. launched by UNICEF and the Global Mobile Industry Association, bringing governments, industry, and other partners together around practical measures that reflect the realities of children across all continents. This agenda gathered further momentum under the French G7 presidency through the G7 Digital and technology ministers under the G7 Summit in Avian. Where I engaged fellow leaders on artificial intelligence and our shared digital future. Kenya joined the G7 members and partner countries in supporting the Avian leaders call. On a safer digital space for minors. Its message is important. Protecting children requires responsibility. Not only from families and governments, but also from those who design and operate the technologies children use. Children do not experience technology in the same way everywhere. Connectivity, devices, language, digital literacy, parental support, and the capacity of institutions to protect them vary greatly across countries and communities. This matters especially for developing countries. For millions of children, technology is a pathway to education, knowledge, healthcare, and opportunity. The digital divide remains real. Our answer, therefore, cannot be to deny children access. We must expand access and make technology safer by design. Countries are developing different approaches to age assurance, platform responsibility, and the protection of minors. We should learn from these experiences, but our approaches must also reflect different social, economic, and technological realities. Kenya has not waited. Through the Children Act, our child protection policies, and our national AI strategy 2025 to 2030, we are strengthening the foundation for a safer digital environment. We are also developing an artificial intelligence and emerging technologies policy in which children online safety will be an important part of our approach to responsible artificial intelligence. I have called for a national dialogue on child online safety. Children, parents, educators, communities, researchers, technology companies, and governments must sit at the same table. We must build safeguards that work for Kenya and Kenyans, as we do for the globe. The roadmap we launched today gives this coalition a clear direction, safety by design, protection of children's data, action against AI-enabled sexual abuse material and defects, effective age assurance, stronger AI literacy, and better evidence about how children actually use AI. I welcome the commitment of UNICEF and our UN partners to support this work with evidence, policy experience, tools, and meaningful child participation. The experiences of children in Africa and across low-income and middle-income countries must be presented both in evidence we gather and in solutions we build. Kenya will play its part. We will advance this work through our national dialogue, and we will continue the conversation when the world's digital community gathers in Nairobi for the Trust Summit in October and the Internet Governance Forum in December. Our children should be free to learn, to create, to connect, and to benefit from technology. They must also be protected from harms they cannot reasonably be expected to manage alone. Safety cannot be an afterthought. It must be designed in from the beginning. Our task is not to build walls between children and the future. It is to build a digital future worthy of our children. Do not lock children out of technology. Build technology fit for children. I thank you.

And for your clarity that children's well-being must be prioritized over business and commercial interests and the importance of safety by design. We have an excellent series. We have a series of excellent interventions today from other member states, from UN agencies, from companies, and from civil society. I'd like to remind all the speakers to please limit their remarks to two minutes so that we ensure that we can hear from everyone. To kick us off, we have Her Excellency Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. Your Excellency, what is the role of the EU and what added value can it bring in protecting children in the age of AI?

Thank you very much for convening here this meeting. It's absolutely high time, and indeed, I would like to tell you a little bit what we are doing here in the European Union in view of social media. First of all, striking figures from the Eurobarometer that we had in July, 92% of Europeans say engage more in protecting children online, 92%. So people have understood what's going on. Another figure I want to share with you, Pedro mentioned it, on average European minors spend four to six hours a day on screen. But there's a second feature that is important. Those children who started with social media younger than 10, spend on average seven to eight hours a day online. This is a full working day for an adult. My second remark is the technology the children are engaging with is highly sophisticated, and it was certainly not built with the well-being of children in mind. It was built with capture attention in mind and monetize this attention. If you look at the Meta settlement, It speaks volumes for itself that Meta is admitting not having… having protected children enough. They created the algorithm. They know exactly what they have done. So absolutely time for us to act. And there is a growing body of strong evidence right now in the medical field about the harm that social media does to our children. We have experts here at the table who can much more than me describe what is going on. This is the reason why we convened a panel of expert for six months. including civil society, parents' organization, youth, to figure out what can we do and how should we shape and act if it's necessary. And last week, we came with the Kids Act. The Kids Act says, if you're younger than 13, no social media at all. If you're younger than 15, no personal account. But in the years between 13 to 15, you can have mini accounts set up by the parents with limited feature and limited time, 60 minutes a day. The parents can reduce this time. For me, the most important part in this law was and is that we reverse the burden of proof. Today, it's so that with the DSA and the DMA, for example, us as the European, we as the European Commission, we have to look whether algorithms are harmful for children, for example. Very tedious process, very difficult, takes month and month and month. Then we argue with the platform. They say they will change a little bit. Again, months and months are passing by. And in the end, after three, four, five years, you have perhaps a fine that is being paid. but you didn't really have an influence on a generation that has grown and passed since then. So the reversal of burden of proof means the platforms have to prove to us that they are safe and not harmful for the children. If this is not the case, no access to our children. So I would like to sum up that indeed our attitude must be, it's not a question whether children can access social media. It's a question how and when we allow social media to access our children. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we have His Excellency, Mr. Alar Karis, President of Estonia. Your Excellency, how is Estonia approaching this? And what are the key measures you are considering? And what do you expect from the coalition on this important topic?

Thank you very much, and Excellencies, delegates, and dear friends. Allow me to start with saying that Estonia, innovation and protection must go together. And Estonia does not see protecting children and enabling innovation as competing objectives. Both have to advance together. AI will be part of children education, future workplaces and everyday lives. Our responsibility is therefore not simply to shield children from technology, but to equip them to use it safely, critically, and confidently. Children's rights, safety, and well-being should be considered from the very beginning of AI design and deployment, rather than addressed only after harm occurs. And technology alone cannot solve technology-related harms. Teachers, parents, and other trusted adults remain essential. And children and young people themselves should have a meaningful role in shaping the technologies, policies, and safeguards that affect them. And some concrete measures. AI Leap. Estonia's AI Leap is a concrete example of this approach. We have chosen to shape and lead the use of AI in education. rather than simply react to it. AI Leap is not about access to technology. It is equally about AI literacy, teachers' capacity, pedagogy, and responsible implementation. And we started with upper secondary school students for different reasons, and now we continue with primary school. And the aim of the students is to become conscious, critical and self-directed users of AI, using it to support thinking and learning rather than to replace what I said already. Implementation should be evidence-based. We need to understand how AI affects learning outcomes, critical thinking, social development and children well-being. Privacy. Data protection and cybersecurity must be built into the systems children use from the outset. At the same time, we need to address emerging AI-related risks, including deepfakes, sexualized synthetic content, and algorithmically amplified harmful material. Now, a final question was what Estonia expects from a coalition. We would like the coalition to help move the international discussion from principles to practical implementation. It can provide a platform for governments to share evidence, lessons learned, and good practices on how to protect children's rights while enabling them to benefit from AI. And the coalition should help develop practical guidance for policymakers and those designing and deploying AI systems used by children. It should also bring together government, international organizations, technology companies, researchers, civil societies, educators, parents, and importantly, children and young people themselves. And no country can address these challenges alone. A coalition can help turn successful national approaches into solutions and safeguards that can be applied more widely. Thank you very much.

We have Dr. Matilde Cereoli, the co-founder and chief scientist of Everyone AI, and also one of the lead architects for IREES, the International Coalition for Beneficial AI for Children. Mathilde, more than 100 researchers have contributed to your work over the past three years. What do leaders in this room most need to hear now about AI and children right now?

Thank you. Excellencies, delegates, and colleagues, today's generation is the first that will never know a world without AI. And their brains are still developing, shaping how they will think, relate, and understand themselves. How these technologies interact with them will influence who they grow up to be. So that is the first thing I want to leave you with. We cannot let AI hinder children's cognitive and social emotional development. The decision we are making will shape whether 20 years from now we look back and see AI as a tool that helped a generation grow or wish we had made different choices when we still had the time. The effect of AI on children's development may be gradual. And the evidence will take years to build, but we do not have the luxury of waiting because millions of children are already interacting with this technology and some risk we anticipated two years ago are no longer hypothetical. Following President Macron's G7 call for scientific contribution, we mapped how generative AI could affect child development. More than 60 researchers have endorsed it. It showed two things. Early scientific consensus is possible, and it should guide design, because design is where the difference lies between a product that supports a child development and one that starts building emotional and cognitive overreliance. Without purposeful, evidence-based design, we risk making two mistakes at the same time, creating harms we could have prevented and missing the opportunities we could have built. That's why at EveryoneAI, we are measuring how those anthropomorphic systems behave toward a child to drive research and product safety implementation. But no one actor can do this alone. Through IRIS, co-led with the Paris Peace Forum, we have built an international network that can support this coalition effort, bringing together governments, frontier AI companies, more than 100 researchers, 15 GOs like EdSafe Alliance and Common Sense Media, and youth voices. What we need now is government action to turn these measures into standards companies have to meet and invest in the research needed to keep improving them. Because what happens in the digital world does not stay there. It shapes children, the adult they become, and the societies they build. Thank you.

Now I'd like to bring in the last speaker for this session from industry. We have Mr. Chris Lehen, the Chief Global Affairs Officer for OpenAI. Chris, what action No problem. What action do you feel industry must play and what role and what can we all do to work together?

Thank you so much for having me. Greatly appreciate the remarks, President Macron, Prime Minister Sanchez, Prime Minister Albanese, Prime Minister Callus, President Ruto, President von der Leyen. All of the remarks were really spot on. I think a piece that I want to begin with is the importance of recognizing that artificial intelligence is a general purpose technology. And I want to underscore that. It falls in the line of the wheel, the printing press, the combustion engine, electricity, the transistor. It is not social media. You can certainly use it in social media. It's more important than social media. And for that reason, it's more important that we actually get this right, particularly when it comes to children. That begins with what the companies need to do. At OpenAI, we have an organizing principle, and that is to treat kids like they are kids. we have a product that's called Chat for Teens. It reflects many of the ideas and suggestions and thoughts that have been shared here this afternoon. It does have age insurance. Prime Minister Albanese is right, we do have a lot of signals to be able to identify someone's age. It defaults people to an under 18 model that is age appropriate, that includes breaks for kids, it includes regular communication as to how they're using it, it includes parental tools for them, and it also includes something called study mode, where we don't provide the answers, we actually work with the child, so the child has to learn the answers. This is consistent with the technology that is designed to help people to learn, to think, to create, to produce, and to build. But as important as it is for companies to play a role, ultimately, and I think a number of folks have made this point, to get this right for society requires democratic inputs, democratic decision making through the democratic process. And we certainly believe it's our responsibility as a company to be deeply engaged in that process. We're very active in supporting the recent legislation that just passed in California, which we do believe is a template for here in the US, which has many of the elements that I just shared. Very much look forward to seeing the Kids Act and how that gets translated into concrete actions. In the EU, strongly support the work of the Commission. One of the things that we've suggested as we've gone along here is, you know, there are these AI safety institutes that we work with from around the world. There's one here in the U.S., the U.K., many of the countries represented here. A thought that I would like to proffer for this distinguished group is, could we think about an AI safety institute specific specifically for children, that would help serve as an organizing tool for the world. And then I think we have to think about the opportunity that is here. If you think about those general purpose technologies, perhaps the one that this is very akin to is the printing press. and thinking of the direction that the world went in between those countries that leaned in and became very literate and those countries that maybe did not. I think Estonia stands as a prime example of a country that is really leaning in on the literacy piece. You mentioned the LEAP program, which builds off of the Tiger Leap that I believe existed in the 1990s. We have worked very closely with Estonia on that. Other countries are now looking at versions of that from Greece, Trinidad, Tobago, Italy at the university level, the UAE, and other countries. And we do believe it's incredibly important that as much as we focus on the safety, that we also think about the opportunity to ensure that the benefits of AI are democratically distributed. At the end of the day, I think a comment that was made several times needs to be fundamental to all of this. These are decisions that need to be made by the people, for the people, and of the people. Thank you so much for having me.

We now move on to the second set of interventions for today's program. I'd like to invite Her Excellency, Ms. Illyana Iotova, President of Bulgaria. Your Excellency, we've heard contributions from civil society, from industry, and soon we'll hear from the UN. How do you see the orchestration between different stakeholders, between states, companies, and civil society, and the UN on child protection in the age of AI? Monsieur le President Macron.

Mr. President, the security and the well-being of children should very much be rooted in the development of these technologies. Protecting children is already to some extent organized, but there's a risk about their threats for the dignity of children or that their trust might be abused. We need to take into account the development of the child and preserve their right to private life. The governments have a responsibility in organizing an efficient protection, and technology companies should also be responsible for the consequences of their decisions on children and take into account their safety when they design products or services. Artificial intelligence is opening new opportunities, make education more accessible, and make and overcome a number of obstacles and make sure that everyone can fully contribute to society. This opportunity should also contribute to helping the children who have special needs. And we should also work on reducing inequalities in getting access to knowledge and technology development. Families and teachers have a major role to play, and they should, to that extent, be supported and be put in a position to help their children develop their own opinions and act responsibly. The opinions of the children themselves should also be heard and taken on board, based on their age and their maturity. Their experience is essential for the decisions impacting their daily lives and their future. Excellencies, Bulgaria commend the opportunity given to us to make the best of UNESCO's capacity and expertise in that field. These are international challenges which require continuous cooperation, and the coalition can indeed bring some practical contributions when it comes to sharing knowledge and put in place appropriate approaches, including for countries with less opportunities. And for Bulgaria, the purpose of this cooperation is that each child should be allowed to grow up in a safe environment and make the best of technological progress in order to develop their capacities and build the best possible life. Thank you for your attention.

Your Excellency, I'd now like to bring in Mr. Jim Steer, the CEO of Common Sense Media. Jim, we have heard from co-chairs that protecting children in the age of AI is a critical topic of governments. What do you think states should be doing to protect children in the age of AI?

First of all, thank you so much for having us here today. Monsieur Macron, merci beaucoup for your leadership. C'est fantastique.

Thank you for your fantastic leadership, President Macron.

McCall, you have Prime Minister Sanchez, you have Prime Minister Albanese, you have President von der Leyen talking about the importance of children in the AI age. This is the first time this has happened on a world stage at this scale, in this way. That is a remarkable moment, and that is remarkable leadership. Look, children -- and some of you will have grandchildren soon, too. Your children and grandchildren are going to be the people who experience the world of AI. They are going to be the beneficiaries or the people who suffer the consequences of how we develop this extraordinary technology. And today is a huge milestone because what it represents is a global movement of people at the highest level of society, but also across all levels of society, that kids and families need to come first in the age of AI. And it is very important that the world leaders are recognizing that. So as Mr. Lehane, my friend over there, mentioned, The U.S. actually has great leadership in this area. It's just not from Washington. It's from California, which is where the country -- where the companies are all based. And we just passed, over the objections of many of the big tech companies, major, important legislation that protects children in the way that President von der Leyen's Kids Act and some of the work that President Macron and others have done in Europe, and also mirroring what President -- Prime Minister Albanese has done. So I think this is a game changing moment for the public and for children in particular. So we look at this, if you look at the issues of children versus the big tech giants, most of which are American companies, we know that. This is the story of David versus Goliath. But I would just like to remind you who won. David won. And that is what is going to happen here too. Because for too long in the era of social media, The big tech companies were allowed to do whatever they want, even though Common Sense Media, we are the leading group here in the US focused on these issues. We would fight with them, but the scale of their power was unique. But that is changing, and it's changing because of the leadership in this room, the leadership of the world, and because at the end of the day, kids need to be our top priority. So I will tell you again, David beat Goliath. Children and grandchildren are going to win here, and common sense will prevail. Thank you very much. Merci beaucoup.

Thank you, Jim. And I'd now like to bring in Ms. Erin Mote, the CEO of InnovateEDU. Erin, as we navigate this critical juncture in AI development, how do we move past the false choice between innovation and safety to build a globally accountable ecosystem for our children?

Jim's right. We gather at a defining crossroads in managing AI's promise and peril. The conversation around artificial intelligence and our children is too often a false binary, innovation versus protection. But safety is not the counterpolarity to innovation. Safety is the foundation upon which true innovation stands. If we build AI systems that compromise the next generation's well-being, we are not innovating. We are mortgaging our future. To move from aspiration to accountability, we must anchor our work in three critical imperatives. First, we need an independent ecosystem of third party evaluators and auditors. As President Mark Kroll rightly emphasized, tech companies cannot self-regulate. Developers cannot mark their own homework. The EdSafe AI Alliance is a global initiative powered by a coalition of stakeholders across the education sector. We're helping to set the agenda for ecosystems alongside multilateral organizations, research institutions, and governments. By championing safe by design principles anchored in our safe framework, safety, accountability, fairness, transparency, and efficacy, we ensure products are transparent and accountable before they ever reach a classroom or a child's hand. Second, as you have heard of the call from the I-RAISE coalition, of which EdSafe is a part, whose critical work in building cohesion and collaboration is essential to ensuring we have global coherence around a shared research agenda. Fragmented national approaches leave gaps where our most vulnerable fall through. AI literacy, evidence, and research must be the cornerstone of our ability to look a parent, an educator, a child in the eye and say, we will protect you. Third, we must champion global collaborations, such as this coalition and the work that EdSafe AI is doing with the University of Oxford. We're building vital connective tissue between researchers, educators, families, and governments. Global AI safety requires moving past borders and boardrooms. This collaboration cannot be limited to the countries where frontier models are developed. From Pakistan's remote villages to Barcelona's classrooms and Nairobi's vibrant neighborhoods, 120 diverse EdSafe AI fellows are leading this work where it matters most. No single actor, sector, or hemisphere can solve this alone. This is our clarion call for global action. The digital world is an environment where our children live, learn, and grow, including my two children, Robert and Claire. Let us commit today to building a digital ecosystem worthy of their potential, anchored in trust, safety, and transparency. Thank you.

Thank you, Erin. Finally, we have a joint intervention from the UN agencies. Her Excellency, Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary General of the ITU. His Excellency, Mr. Khaled El-Anani, Director General of UNESCO. Her Excellency, Ms. Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF, and His Excellency, Mr. Volker, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Excellencies, let me thank our leaders from France, Spain, Kenya, and Australia for bringing us together today. Jim, I too believe this is a remarkable moment, and as you said, a game-changing moment. We are here because we believe that every child should be able to benefit from AI without having to bear risks that they cannot understand or control. ITU is proud to join the launch of this coalition, and today we offer the coalition three contributions, drawing on nearly two decades of ITU's work in child online protection. The first is technical expertise. We can advance technical standards for safety and privacy by design, including age assurance, and work with partners to address AI-generated abuse, deepfakes, and non-consensual intimate imagery. Second, support in countries. Working with UNICEF, UNESCO, OCHR and governments, we can bring guidance and practical tools together with particular attention to programs in developing countries. We can also help reinforce the skills that parents and educators need to recognize the risks and use artificial intelligence with confidence while ensuring, of course, that children themselves have a meaningful voice in shaping these programs. And third, coordination that leads to action. The UN Interagency Working Group on Artificial Intelligence that is co-led by ITU and UNESCO offers a way to connect expertise across the UN system, including the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to mobilize and to track voluntary commitments to this coalition's roadmap. ITU can leverage its Partner to Connect platform to turn our shared roadmap into action. Ladies and gentlemen, we must, we must do everything that we can to make AI worthy of our children and their caregivers. We owe it to them through safer products, stronger protections, and meaningful participation. That is the power and the responsibility of this coalition. You can count on ITU support every step of the way.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I thank leaders of France, Kenya, Australia, and Spain for bringing us together around this very important, remarkable moment, as Jim said. UNESCO is ready to contribute to this coalition, first as a standard setter. In 2021, UNESCO's member states adopted the recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence, the first global normative framework on AI. Second, as a policy advisor, having worked with some 80 countries to translate its principles into policies and practices. Third, as a capacity builder, with expertise in training more than 25,000 teachers, students, content creators, civil servants, judges on ethical AI. Fourth, as a trusted platform for dialogue, UNESCO will continue bringing together government, companies, civil society, families, and young people. path by mobilizing UNESCO global networks of experts, university chairs, research institutes, and associated schools around the world. And we published last June with our partners in France a guide, practical guide for parents to enforce the dialogue with their children. Finally, we are exploring now with our member states a new normative instrument to empower and protect children and young people for the age of AI. For this reason, UNESCO supports the roadmap and propose working on the thematic working group on AI literacy, digital literacy and critical thinking. Together with our partners, UNICEF, ITU and OCHR, we can connect principles of expertise and concrete action to deliver tangible results for children and young people. Thank you.

Oh, great. Thank you so much, President Macron. Thank you. Nice to see you. Excellencies, thank you for inviting UNICEF to be here today. So this past July in Geneva, UNICEF helped launch the Coalition for Children's Rights and Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Today is an important step forward in the direction of protecting children. But we all know that the simple truth here is that children are not waiting for us to make up our minds about AI. They're already using it. On the one hand, opportunities of AI are enormous for children. It can help children learn, create, and access information and services that were once out of reach. UNICEF is fully engaged in those efforts, but the risks are real too. Our research found that in just one year across 11 countries, at least 1.2 million children had their images turned into sexually explicit deepfakes. And despite the name, there is nothing fake about the harm these things cause for children. AI must be designed with children's safety and rights in mind from the very beginning, which means that we are already behind. This coalition can help us do three things. First, put safety and child rights at the heart of AI design. Second, build better evidence about how AI affects children's learning, development, mental health, and well-being. And third, give children a voice in the decision shaping their digital lives while ensuring that every child can benefit from these technologies. UNICEF brings global experience, evidence, children's perspectives to this work. But while regulation is critical here, there is no government, no agency, or no company that can do this alone. We all bear the responsibility to keep children, their rights, and their needs at the center of the AI discussion. Thank you very much.

Heads of state and.

Government, thank you for organizing this important event.

...The last to be asked about it. So my office asked them. Together with our partners, we surveyed more than 1,000 children in 49 countries about their concerns around AI. And children told us they worry about AI being used to create fake images of real people, to exploit their private data, to reduce their creativity, and to replace real-life relationships with their families, friends, teachers, or therapists. Crucially, they want to be heard before decisions are taken, not after. Is this happening? Are children being heard? The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world today. It is, one should also mention, legally binding, not just for states, but with clear responsibilities for the corporate sector and in particular the tech companies. The duty to respect children's rights and all our rights lies with those building AI. It includes human rights due diligence before release, transparency, and independent verification. And it relies on governments enforcing laws. Voluntary commitments are simply not enough. There is also fundamentally a question of responsibility and accountability. We welcome very much the coalition's roadmap. pointing to international guidance on rights-based AI for children and young people, every AI product needs to be required to clear a high bar before it reaches a child. We all are there to support these efforts and you have heard all our voices and there is one clear message. Children's rights apply to AI as they apply everywhere. Thank you.

Thank you to all our speakers and once again, thank you to the co-chairs for their leadership on what many have described as a kind of remarkable moment. It's very clear that we need safety by design while keeping in mind the different needs, the different aspirations, and different contexts of geographies across the world, that safety has to be a foundation for innovation, not something that gets deprioritized in the name of innovation, that children's well-being must prioritize business interest, this is a non-negotiable, and that we all need to work together, but companies need to be held accountable. With that, I'd like to hand the floor back to the co-chairs for their closing remarks.

Thank you.

Thank you very much to each and every one of you for your contributions. I believe, first of all, that there is a genuine agreement that we must take action and that we can no longer wait. Like Prime Minister Albanese, he mentioned the laws about to be adopted by Australia. We have as well, we've heard about what is being done in Europe and the determination of science as well. We heard from the organizations that gathered together what is being done by NGOs, by the industry, by UN agencies. So very clearly, there is a trend of willingness to converge. And I acknowledge that no one is challenging the assessment. And, well, of course, all of us present here share the same views, but I think it's already a good starting point and no one else no one either is questioning that it is urgent for us to take action and we need that momentum and let us not lose it there is a willingness to move forward together and to take a number of actions so let us make sure that we put together these tools to assess what is happening make sure that the assess those in charge of assessing what is happening are independent that we also agree on a joint methodology can then be applied by the various governments and various agencies. So based on what we have done today, we shall continue to work together and maybe take stock on the occasion of the Paris Peace Forum in Paris in November, the 10th and 11th of November, and thank you for mentioning it. We can agree on a methodology, a process, as well on funding to make sure that we're successful and put in place a system to protect children and teenagers vis-a-vis AI. I will not keep the floor any longer. Thank you very much for your mobilization. Thank you for attending. I would like to thank my co-chairs as well for the initiatives they are taking in their countries. And it also, uh, we, we see that there is a, a union of these, uh, at least three continents that's very powerful. We're not giving in and, and let us see each other again on the 11th of November. Thank you so much.