Facebook Asia Pacific team has called on the ruling PTI MNA Riaz Fatyana who is also the Convener of National Parliamentary Taskforce on Sustainable Development Goals. The Representative of Facebook Sahar Tariq said that Pakistan is the second largest country in uploading child pornographic material on the internet. “As many as 0.5 million child pornographic material was uploaded in just 90 days in 2019.”

During the meeting, Sahar Tariq said that it is incumbent on all of us to focus on the children’s rights, adding “We are doing our best to stop the spread of child pornographic material on Facebook.”

She said that it is our responsibility to ensure the child protection, adding “Facebook is taking steps in order to increase the literacy rate.”

Ms Tariq said that around six to seven Sustainable Development Goals are related to the children’s rights only. “We have removed at least 5,000 content material on the request of the government of Pakistan, although this material was not against its policies.”

She said that the children are more vulnerable than the women and thus they are targeted more frequently, adding “As many as 20,000 women entrepreneurs will be trained by 2021.”

Facebook Representative said that around 41 million people are using Facebook in Pakistan, adding “Facebook is collaborating with the government to promote digital literacy.”

She said although it is difficult, we want to make transparent policies, adding “We don’t make policies in the air; we seek expert opinions.” But the biggest problem in Pakistan is that most of the people do not report to Facebook in case of any problem.

On the contrary, “Sometimes even that content is asked to be removed that should not have been removed in the first place.”

The Facebook representative further said “We closed at least 1.7 billion accounts in the three months.”

“Facebook receives the most number of reports on various aspects from Pakistan. In 2019 Pakistan witnessed 35 percent increase in the blocking of the online content.”

On this occasion, MNA Mehnaz Aziz said that the Zainab-Alert Bill has been introduced in Pakistan regarding children’s rights.