ICMEC Publishes its 2024 Impact Report

ALEXANDRIA, VA, UNITED STATES, May 15, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- · 25 years of working to stop child abduction, exploitation, and abuse around the world.

· Focus on collaboration, advocacy, innovation to drive positive systemic change.

· We reached over 120 countries, 168,000 students, 155,000 professionals, over 90 financial institutions, technology companies, law enforcement agents, regulators, civil society actors and academia.

· 2024 was a year of transition with Stephen Kavanagh appointed Secretary General in February 2025

The new 2024 ICMEC Impact Report aims to highlight some key results of our team's hard work and the vital contribution of our partners and donors. It also signposts areas for growth in 2025 and beyond. With a new Secretary General joining in February 2025 ICMEC’s focus is expanding impact across the world covering the key areas of Technology, Learning, Community and Advocacy.

In 2024 we trained over 2,600 child protection professionals across more than 30 countries, supported governments in building stronger laws, faster alerts, and safer systems, expanded our CSAM (child sexual abuse material) Reporting Portals to 12 countries giving children a path out of harm. ICMEC has released multilingual tools and survivor-informed publications to support healing and justice, supported legal reforms including Colombia’s Alerta Rosa and is a member of Global partnerships such as the ALUNA Project.

The scale of the child safety crisis ICMEC works to address is highlighted in the Impact report. The findings of Childlight, the child safety institute, show there are 10 cases of online child sexual exploitation and abuse reported every second and that 1 in 8 children globally have been subjected to online solicitation in the last 12 months.

ICMEC seeks to make the world safer for children by engaging public and private sector stakeholders in global and local collective action. Together with these partners we build child protection capacity, raise awareness around missing children and child sexual abuse and exploitation issues, return children to safety and disrupt the misuse of commercial platforms to sexually exploit children.

Further examples of our work in 2024 included:

· Global Reach and Capacity Building: ICMEC programmes and training initiatives reached over 155,000 professionals across 120+ countries, equipping law enforcement, educators, healthcare providers, and child protection specialists with critical skills to identify, prevent, and respond to child exploitation.

· Support for Law Enforcement: Through efforts like Operation Renewed Hope II, conducted with ICE Homeland Securities Investigations, the Tim Tebow Foundation, and 47 partner countries, ICMEC helped support the identification and rescue of 36 child victims of online exploitation and generated over 380 investigative leads for ongoing cases.

· Digital Safety Initiatives: ICMEC launched and expanded educational campaigns, including Choose Your Digital Path in partnership with Save the Children Romania, to enhance digital literacy and empower children to make safer choices online.

· Policy and Advocacy Leadership: ICMEC provided expert input on legislative developments, including model laws for age verification to protect minors online, contributing to stronger protections in jurisdictions across the United States and internationally.

· New Tools and Resources: 2024 saw the development and distribution of new safeguarding resources, including enhancements to the ICMEC Learning Platform and ICMEC EdPortal for schools, families, law enforcement, and communities.

· Research and Publications: ICMEC produced a series of in-depth reports, including multisectoral response and capacity assessments, that offer governments and institutions evidence-based recommendations to strengthen national child protection frameworks.

Read the Impact Report here: https://www.icmec.org/annual-report/

Stephen Kavanagh, ICMEC Secretary General, commented:

"Child protection is a shared and global responsibility. Every successful rescue, every new law, every training delivered is based on cooperation with law enforcement, education professionals, non-profits, commercial enterprises, Governments and other partners. We all stand together on this.

Wherever children are we know that they become more vulnerable when they go missing or are trafficked, and across the world we know children are forced to live in the darkness of sexual exploitation and abuse.

When we stand together against this threat and act to protect children, when we accept responsibility, when we cooperate and share data responsibly we know children are safer. ICMEC has delivered so much in 2024, but we know there is so much more to do in 2025 and the years to come.”

Sally Paull, Chair of ICMEC’s Board of Directors, added:

“ICMEC is proud to have achieved a great deal over its first 25 years and the challenge is to do more in future, multiplying our impact. We aim to catalyse work in new countries and address new problems. Whether it be legislation that addresses the challenges of young people’s always-on access to smart phones or working with allies in the financial sector we take knowhow from one area and apply it to another. We continue to use our convening power to bring together coalitions to address problems that are too widespread for any one entity to solve. I am proud of the ICMEC team for what they continue to achieve and for their ambition to protect children, wherever they are in the world.”

About the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC)
ICMEC is a non-governmental organisation working to make the world a safer place for all children by defending against child sexual exploitation, abuse, and the risk of going missing. Headquartered in the United States, ICMEC coordinates with partners around the world to develop research, technologies, and educational resources to aid in the search and recovery of children who are missing, fight child sexual exploitation, and empower caring professionals, institutions, and communities to safeguard children from all forms of sexual abuse. For more information please visit www.icmec.org or contact ICMEC at information@icmec.org or +1-703-837-6313. For media enquiries please contact us at media@icmec.org .

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