The United Nations is working to mainstream sex with minors, stating in a report that relations with underage individuals can be considered consensual despite worldwide prohibitions on such acts.
"Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law," several U.N.-backed organizations claimed in a March report that advocates decriminalizing these acts as part of a "human rights-based approach" to laws governing sexual relations.
"The enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them," according to the report, authored by the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) with support from UNAIDS and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. "Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity, and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees."
The U.N. report echoes the thinking of groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which condones pedophilia and works to abolish age-of-consent laws. While the report stops short of calling for the legalization of sex with minors, it maintains that those under 18 years of age have the mental capacity to willingly have sex with older individuals. The report is raising red flags with experts who say the United Nations is trying to mainstream underage sex as it pushes a woke ideology that has long existed at the fringes of society.
"This document advocates for a lot of troubling ideas and bad policies," said Grace Melton, a Trump administration appointee to the United Nations who works as an analyst for the Heritage Foundation think tank. "Not only does it suggest that minors may be mature enough to consent to sexual activity, but it also asserts that 'criminal law may not in any way impair' the so-called right to abortion or to 'gender-affirming care.'"
The report, Melton added, "illustrates some of the consequences of the progressive left's expansion of what constitutes 'human rights.'"
Other portions of the report advocate for the mass decriminalization of sex acts. As part of this decriminalization, "consensual sexual conduct, irrespective of the type of sexual activity, the sex/gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression of the people involved, or their marital status, may not be criminalized in any circumstances," according to the report. "Consensual same-sex, as well as consensual different-sex sexual relations, or consensual sexual relations with or between trans, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse people, or outside marriage—whether pre-marital or extramarital—may, therefore, never be criminalized."
Ian Seiderman, the legal and policy director at the ICJ, said in a statement that laws criminalizing sex "not only violate human rights, but the fundamental principles of criminal law themselves."
Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter did not respond to a request for comment.