Hosting Country Bahrain Bahrain


Welcome

Under the patronage of HE Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Minster responsible for telecommunications sector Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatala Al Khalifa, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and the Family Online Safety Institute in partnership with the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Internet service providers are to host the Gulf’s first ICT and Child safety conference.

Child online safety is of paramount concern to communities throughout the world. The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) is now taking the first steps in Bahrain to ensure such safety by holding the first online child safety conference to be held in the Gulf region during April 2010 (26th – 28th).

TRA is hoping that this conference and the campaign that follows will bring together world renowned experts and the Kingdom’s Internet Service Providers in order to highlight the very real risks that do exist and to build a consensus to create a safe haven for children and young adults in which children and young adults can explore and benefit from the positive resources available globally on the internet, whilst at the same time protecting them, as best we can, from the less than desirable aspects of the online world.
TRA wants this conference to be the one that everyone remembers as the spark that triggered the online safety and corporate social responsibility revolution in the Middle East.

The conference agenda is being formulated to ensure that over the 2 ½ days of the conference the Kingdom’s ISPs have the opportunity to hear firsthand about the best of breed practices being deployed around the world aimed at protecting the young, promoting ICT literacy and digital citizenship.

The conference with be mediated by the Family Online Safety Institute (www.fosi.org) The Family Online Safety Institute works to make the online world safer for kids and their families by identifying and promoting best practice, tools and methods in the field of online safety, that also respect free expression. They do this through the development of public policy, technology, education and special events. FOSI is a trusted convener, bringing together leaders in government, industry and the nonprofit sectors to collaborate and innovate new solutions in child safety in a Web 2.0 world.

The conference will be open to all Internet Service Providers, Telecommunications companies, children’s charities; educational establishments; and NGOs (from all the Arab countries) and the public. We have already received confirmation from some of the World’s leading experts.- Please see the Agenda from more details.

This conference will be ground breaking for the Arab World and will set the stage for all future initiatives in the region and be the start of the digital revolution that sees ISPs empowered to make the correct decisions regarding the protection of the young, providing the tools and education to parents and those people to whom we entrust the care of our children to enable them to make the correct choices over their children’s use of the internet and ensure that the Kingdom’s industry embarks on building a national consensus for online safety.

At the close of the conference we are looking to get all the Kingdom’s ISPs to sign an MOU committing them to path and to start the process of building a Bahrain Internet Watch Foundation. This will ensure that issues of online child abuse are dealt with and the victims of abuse receive the appropriate required care and support.
The conference will provide the communications providers in the region with a greater understanding of what they could to do to help their consumers make informed choices about the services and provisions they use. We will bring specialists from the region but also from around the world to engage all stakeholders in this Web 2.0 challenge, to prepare Bahrain and the surrounding countries for 21st century citizenship.