Fijians use up to 626.13 terabytes of data in three months to consume adult content and this sees the country ranking among the top 10 nations in terms of accessing pornography on the internet.
While revealing this in Parliament, Minister for Communications, Manoa Kamikamica said to put this into context, 626 terabytes of data is approximately equal to the amount of data stored in a 100 million books.
He said this is a very serious problem and he is mindful that the relationship between pornography and increased sexual-related crimes is a complex and much debated topic as it sparks privacy, freedom of expression, and liberty consideration.
Kamikamica indicated that he is tabling a proposition to Cabinet to create a nationwide taskforce on a bipartisan basis to address this issue.
“With Cabinet’s approval, we will carry out these consultations on a bipartisan basis with diverse stakeholder engagement targeted at addressing the root causes and assess the solutions available and agree on an approach to address this holistically.”
“I am sure that there is consensus on both sides that any crime, including what is being discussed which is sexually related crimes, are a major concern, including the potential harms of excessive pornographic consumption.”
He added that there are emerging technological solutions that can be considered as part of their assessment, such as filtering systems which can block child sexual exploitation material or upcoming technologies that are still evolving such as age verification or age assurance systems whereby access to explicit content is not accessed by children.
Kamikamica further stated that they intend to partner with other ministries, the Online Safety Commission, the Fiji Police Force, CSOs and others.
