The world's wealthiest nations are to set up an international database to help police track down paedophiles and rescue their victims, it emerged today.
The Home Office confirmed that home affairs and justice ministers from G8 countries have endorsed the creation of the international child sexual exploitation database, which will allow police in their countries to share and compare paedophile images found on the internet. The system should make it possible to identify offenders and victims more quickly.
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, who chaired a G8 summit on the issue in Sheffield, said the database would help police "to protect children all over the world [from] the sickening trade in child pornography".
He said: "Because of the global nature of the internet, online child exploitation is a crime we can have most impact on by working internationally. I am determined to ensure we agree on the best way to set up this database, and to help police forces in every continent and country catch and punish those responsible."
The database, developed by Interpol, will be similar to the one set up two years ago by the National Crime Squad that uses the most powerful image-recognition programme in the world to map the facial characteristics of child abuse victims, enabling checks to be carried out against millions of images within seconds.
The UK system, known as Childbase, can tell investigators instantly if a victim is unknown or has already been dealt with. This shortens the laborious and harrowing task of going through hundreds of thousands of child abuse images on perpetrators' computers. Childbase holds 800,000 images and has enabled officers to identify 3,000 victims.
Bill Hughes, director of the National Crime Squad, said a co-ordinated international approach to identifying internet paedophiles and their victims was necessary because "images retrieved in one part of the world are likely to have been produced and distributed elsewhere".
Mr Hughes, the director general in waiting of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the UK's version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said: "This is why the importance of a centrally held, international database, such as the international child sexual exploitation database that we are proposing can not be over-emphasised.
"However, this is only the first step and as law enforcement agencies we must seek to identify those involved with the production of such images as well as prosecuting those who view the images as an end-user, all the time ensuring we work to protect the potential victims and rescue the actual victims."
A Home Office spokesman said the G8 project was expected to cost about £2m to set up.
The database is expected to be launched later this year, with other countries likely to join later.