Imagine you find yourself in a world of infinite possibilities, a world with new friends to be found, new games to play and new ideas to explore. But how can you be sure you’re safe, how can you trust people you can't see, how do you know what you're learning is true? How can the Internet be safe?
Every year the Council of Europe joins others around the world in celebrating Safer Internet Day on the second day of the second week of the second month - in 2020, that's Tuesday February 11th. It's a day when millions of people get together to promote a safer and better Internet, where everyone feels able to use technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively.
Because we bring together 47 countries from every part of Europe, the Council of Europe is in a powerful position to help create a change for the better. And because our work is to defend human rights, democracy and fairness, we saw a long time ago that we needed to use our experience and expertise to make sure the online world also respected everyone in the same way.
We work with many international partners on building strong internet governance ; we drew up the world’s first international legal text to stop crime on line ; we even launched the first international convention to protect data back in 1981- before the Internet became the main way to carry out day to day transactions.
For families, educators and policy-makers we have launched the Internet Literacy Handbook, which goes hand in hand with the Guide to Human Rights for Internet Users. Last year, we drew up a set of ground rules to make sure children are kept safe in the digital environment. Even young children can learn basic Internet safety rules with an online game "Through the Wild Web Woods".
So we celebrate Safer Internet Day on one day every year. And every other day we work just as hard to make the Internet truly safe.