New report states the Netherlands hostsmost of Europe’s Child Sexual Abuse Material

Sven Stijnman

6 October 2025

New research has identified that the Netherlands is responsible for hosting more than 60% of Western Europe’s Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) – and nearly a third of the world’s total – fuelling an emergency that devastates the lives of millions of children globally.

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Survivor says swift action could ease global crisis

CSAM

CSAM refers to any visual content depicting children under 18 in sexual acts or in a sexualised manner, including photos, videos, digital media, or computer-generated images. The term is preferred over “child pornography” as it underscores that the material documents abuse and that children cannot consent.

The Netherlands largest host

A new report from the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, based at the University of Edinburgh, finds that the Netherlands is the largest global host, responsible for 30% of the world’s total CSAM.

The findings have prompted Childlight and Dutch child rights NGO Terre des Hommes Netherlands to call upon Dutch MPs contesting the upcoming Dutch general election to commit to strong, enforceable action to confront the crisis.

They warn that children across Europe and around the world are suffering as a result of this availability of CSAM at scale and that robust legislation and enforcement there could significantly reduce the volume of abuse material online globally.

Highest CSAM rate

Childlight’s annual Into the Light Index on Global Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse calculates country level CSAM availability rates across Western Europe and South Asia, based on data from INHOPE and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which track the problem. This rate considers how much abuse material is being hosted within a country (based on the location of the server making the CSAM available globally) and how many reports of material have been logged, per head of population.

It finds the Netherlands has by far the highest CSAM rate in Western Europe at 880.9 reports per 10,000 people, according to 2024 data. It was followed by Slovakia at 193.7, Lithuania at 190 and Luxembourg at 186.3. The highest rate in South Asia was in the Maldives, at 94, followed by Bangladesh at 64.1 and Pakistan at 41.3. The UK has the 12th highest rate of 34 Western European countries at 41.8, and the lowest is San Marino at 5.4. (See table below)

Unwanted content

The study also found that approximately one in five children in Western Europe reported experiencing unwanted or pressured sexual interactions online – known as online solicitation – before the age of 18.

In addition, by the age of 18, 2.5% in Western Europe experienced non-consensual taking and sharing of sexual images or videos of children, known as CSAM or Image-Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA).

The report found 2.2% of Western European children reported this type of harm in the past year. Meanwhile, it was estimated that one in 15 children experienced exposure to unwanted sexual content by the age of 18; and one in 5 in the past year.

Far from being a domestic issue, the scale of CSAM hosted by servers and reported within the Netherlands has far-reaching consequences, enabling criminal networks, fuelling demand for new abuse and undermining child protection efforts across Europe, says Childlight.

Unacceptable numbers

“What happens in the Netherlands is not staying in the Netherlands,” said Childlight CEO Paul Stanfield. “Dutch data infrastructure is being used to spread images of child abuse worldwide – including abuse of children in other countries. Every day this material stays online, children are re-victimised, and abusers are emboldened. This is preventable and we need urgent political will to stop it.”

Terre des Hommes underline this and argue the latest figures show that if the Netherlands aligned with the Western European average, 1.5 million fewer notices of Dutch-hosted CSAM material flagged by watchdogs would have been necessary in the past two years.

“These numbers are worrying and unacceptable,” says Gráinne Le Fevre, CEO of Terre des Hommes Netherlands. “We urge Dutch politicians to act quickly. Better regulations are needed to stop this scale of abuse. The time to act is now.”

Direct risks to children

Childlight’s report highlights the direct risks posed to children globally due to CSAM
reporting and hosting in the Netherlands. Once CSAM is hosted there, it can be accessed almost instantly by abusers worldwide, including across Europe, further fuelling demand and re-traumatising the children whose abuse has been recorded and distributed.

This persistent availability of CSAM undermines the efforts of European countries like the United Kingdom, Germany and France which have invested significantly in detection, takedown and law enforcement. While those nations move swiftly to remove harmful content, material left online within the Netherlands continues to be distributed, weakening continental enforcement as a whole, despite efforts by Dutch authorities to tackle the problem.

Better online safety

Rhiannon-Faye McDonald was abused at the age of 13 after being approached online by a perpetrator posing as a teenager. Soon afterwards he turned up at her home and abused her in person. Today she campaigns for better online safety through the Marie Collins Foundation.

She said: “For too long technology companies have favoured profit over safety. A rising numbers of children being abused is a direct result. For most victims and survivors, even with the right support, the impacts are significant and long-lasting. We live with misplaced self-blame and the fear of being recognised by those who have seen the images or videos of our abuse. For anybody who believes that it’s “just a photo”, this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

More research is needed

Childlight said several factors may underpin the Dutch problem and that more research is needed to identify root causes, including the country’s role as a global hub for data centres and internet exchange points, the scale and openness of its hosting market, and potential differences in hosting business models or takedown procedures. Legal and regulatory frameworks may also shape both the speed of content removal and the visibility of CSAM in monitoring data, while strong detection partnerships could amplify reporting compared to countries with weaker monitoring capacity. 

However, there are signs of change. In 2022, the Dutch government introduced reforms to strengthen criminal investigations into CSAM, and law enforcement agencies have begun increasing takedown capacity.

Tackle the problem as a priority

At the EU level, proposed regulation – including the EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation – seek to require tech companies to proactively detect, report, and remove CSAM. If passed, this would compel the Netherlands and other member states to take a more interventionist approach to content monitoring, potentially closing long-standing loopholes in digital hosting laws.

“Every day CSAM stays online, children are re-victimised. The Netherlands has a unique responsibility, and opportunity, to close these gaps and stop this cycle of harm,” said Gráinne Le Fevre, CEO of Terre des Hommes Netherlands.

Childlight and Terre des Hommes urge the new Dutch government to tackle the problem as a priority, support law enforcement responses to rapidly identify and remove CSAM, identify and safeguard victims, and bring perpetrators to justice.

Calculated CSAM

Table 1. Calculated CSAM rate per 10,000 people for countries in UNICEF Classified Region of Western Europe, 2023–2024

Countries in Western Europe	CSAM rate 2023	CSAM rate 2024
Andorra	32.0	12.9
Austria	21.5	30.9
Belgium	36.0	22.9
Cyprus	56.4	42.6
Czechia	34.0	26.9
Denmark	20.0	17.5
Estonia	39.2	40.2
Finland	31.0	55.2
France	49.9	28.3
Germany	24.5	29.3
Gibraltar	38.4	23.9
Greece	24.4	16.7
Belgium	36.0	22.9
Hungary	26.6	34.8
Iceland	33.5	44.0
Ireland	6.0	53.5
Italy	15.0	22.6
Latvia	48.7	72.1
Liechtenstein	8.0	11.5
Lithuania	44.0	190.0
Luxembourg	125.7	186.3
Malta	32.0	22.9
Monaco	78.0	29.5
Netherlands	172.1	880.9
Norway	26.5	44.5
Poland	28.0	21.6
Portugal	44.0	25.7
San Marino	11.0	5.4
Slovakia	74.0	193.7
Slovenia	29.8	22.2
Spain	21.9	14.9
Sweden	36.8	95.2
Switzerland	56.8	21.5
United Kingdom	27.2	41.8