Mobile Technologies for Child Protection: A briefing note

The purpose of this briefing note is to provide an overview of current applications of mobile technologies with relevance for child protection. This is an area of rapid innovation, and new applications are being developed all the time. Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing sectors in Africa, and the relevance and reach of mobile technologies for development and humanitarian work is only going to increase over the coming years. Many technical, legal and security aspects of these new technologies remain to be fully addressed and worked out. The dependence on technology, network coverage and electricity supply also mean that mobile technologies cannot be used everywhere. The main part of this note presents three different types of mobile applications for: (a) gathering and transmitting data by child protection service providers; (b) self-protection and for complaints mechanisms; (c) social transfers.