DISINFO: UN Human Rights Office proposes that all countries legalise paedophilia
SUMMARY
The extensive work of the International Commission of Jurists and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resulted in a radical project. The resolution calls upon all UN countries to decriminalise all sexual activities, in other words, to legalise pedophilia. Instead of children's rights, the rights of paedophiles are protected.
RESPONSE
This claim from Belarusian state-controlled outlet is consistent with the recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation about the morally corrupt West and international institutions.
The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty were developed by international legal experts under the aegis of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) together with the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The disinformation claim seriously misrepresents the document. Nowhere does the said report call for the decriminalising “all sexual activities” including sex with minors. On 20 April 2023 the ICJ issued a special statement which says,
“The 8 March Principles do not call for the decriminalization of sex with children, nor do they call for the abolition of a domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex. Indeed, the ICJ stresses that States have a clear obligation under international law to protect children from all forms of abuses, such as child sexual abuse, including through the criminalization of such conduct.”In an April 18 daily press briefing, Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, also addressed the misreporting issues saying about the ICJ report,
“It did not call for the decriminalization of sex with children, nor did it call for the abolition of the age of consent. The International Commission of Jurists report set out legal principles to guide the application of the international human rights law to criminal law across a range of issues [...] The UN is resolute in fighting the sexual exploitation of children, upholds that sexual exploitation and abuse of children is a crime, and supports countries to protect children.”
See earlier disinformation cases alleging that the Western mass culture today is a perversion, paedophilia in various open and concealed forms, that Western schools are teaching students that Jesus was bisexual, and that western Satanists and Pagans are mad at Belarus and Russia.