 It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 34th meeting of the Interpol Specialist Group on Crimes Against Children. This meeting gathers yearly experts from all over the globe to share best practices, information and new technologies, and to brainstorm on new approaches to enhance the efficiency of this global fight. With close to 250 participants and more than 58 participating countries, the composition of this meeting demonstrates the relevance and importance of the international community of experts' efforts to fight all forms of crime against children. Your attendance here today proves your dedication to this cause. First, let me acknowledge the hard work of the organising team who has spent the last month preparing for what I am confident will be a productive and informative gathering. During the past year, all of you – law enforcement officers, academics, NGOs and industry members – gathered in this room worked hard to protect our most precious citizens, our children from exploitation. We at Interpol made this serious crime against children one of our priorities and are deploying a strategy to encourage all regions to join the international effort to combat child exploitation. Indeed, this expansion is becoming a reality. The Interpol Secretary's General, Jurgen Stock and the Vulnerable Communities Assistant Director Mick Moran are participating in the National Forum to Prevent Sexual Exploitation of Children through Technological Means. Since the last meeting, we have more than doubled our manpower and welcomed nine new criminal intelligence officers from eight different countries to our Crimes Against Children team. Most of you already know our International Child Sexual Exploitation Database and we are very proud to say that 49 countries in Europol are now connected to ICSI and discussions are ongoing to connect several others soon, including the Philippines, Thailand and South Africa. This positive development can be observed in many countries and thanks to the collaborative effort of this network, as of November 1, 2016 we can count 9,640 identified victims in the ICSI database. We, as all of you, persevere and improve our capacities and services. In 2016 saw the integration of videos in the ICSI database and saw the start of ICSI version 4 development that will allow direct interconnection with national child abuse databases. Our first victim identification training course for experts will be held in December 2016 co-organized with Europol and C-Pol using the curriculum that was jointly developed by two organizations and funded by Interpol through the Ongoing Human Dignity Foundation and Dutch National Police Project. We look forward to working with them in the future as we firmly embed victim identification as an essential part of investigating online child exploitation within police services in our member countries. These evolutions are incredible opportunities to bolster the identification of child victims and stop the exploitation of children worldwide. They also show important international collaboration is in ever our changing and complex environment. Every day there are more and more people becoming engaged in this issue from all sectors of society and business. We will continue together to provide the best technology and collaborate with the brightest minds in an effort to combat crimes against children on a global level. Partnership remains at the core of everything that we do. It would be naive to imagine that any one sector can tackle this issue alone. Law enforcement must work with other stakeholders within their member countries and we must do this at an international level. This is one of the core and fundamental principles of the We Protect Global Alliance and Interpol relationship. This is evidenced by the fact that you're all here today and for the next few days but also our partnership with In Hope and ECPAT international is valuable as well. As always this meeting promises to be very informative and fruitful. I encourage you to take the opportunity to mix both professionally and socially and wish you all the best in a productive and successful meeting. Thank you very much.