New UN report says children can consent to sex with adults

Aren't they just? I read the OP, and my first thought was, this is WPATH all over again.

I feel like this. Not helped by living in and being from Scotland. Wake me up when it's all over.

The UN falls yet further in my estimation. I agree that the wording can be read as allowing paedophillic sex because the child can be deemed to have ‘consented’. If it shouldn’t be read like that, then it should be written so it couldn’t be.

Some people who had lost traction as members of PIE seem to have regained it via WPATH, and these guidelines are very much in line with that.

I wonder how this would affect the vile men and boys who groom young teenage girls who believe they have a boyfriend, then go on to pass them around other men and boys. In theory the girls consent but the reality is so far removed from that. But I cannot see how they could be prosecuted and convicted with this in law

A movement to have paedophilia accepted as just another sexuality like, for example, homosexuality, has been around for years. PIE infiltrated the Left in the Seventies and encouraged the lowering of the age of consent, with some people encouraging lowering to a ludicrous age.

I’m not defending the principles as a whole, there are some I don’t agree with and others I haven’t looked at. Just pointing out I don’t think this one is bad. It reflects what most child development experts say about children. And I don’t think it would change the landscape for the England and Wales if we decided to include it in our considerations when we made and enforced laws. I also don’t think criminal law is an appropriate tool to discourage most sexual engagement by teens that they wanted to engage in.

I’m not a lawyer. I studied philosophy at university, worked as a police officer (many, many years ago) and later with civil rights organizations and volunteered with sexual assault survivors. I have an interest in the ethics of criminal law as well as how it can be effective in sexual assault cases.

I’ve never had to consider if a child had the capacity to consent. In England and Wales there is a minimum age of 13 under which it’s considered that no child could be capable of consent. I don’t know, after that, the ins and outs of how it’s determined, though when I was in the police it was a combination of questions asked of the child, consideration of the suspect (i.e. any power differential, if they groomed the victim, etc.) and expert opinion. If the child is under 16 the prosecution can fall back on sex with a child under 16 as a crime if they don’t think it will be possible to prove a lack of consent (whether due to capacity or because courts are notoriously poor at believing sexual assault victims on consent) or if there are other factors that mean it’s in the child’s best interests. As I read it, I don’t think principle 16 impacts any of that.

@NumberTheory are you a lawyer?

Your comments seem to suggest that you are and, if so, it’d be interesting to know what is your area of legal speciality?

More specifically, as you’re defending these principles, I was also wondering how you felt that, in a matter of law i.e., a dispute that sex between an adult (legally defined) and a child (legally defined) was consensual or not, how would or could it be determined that the child had the capacity to consent, not just if the child consented?

Whose job would it be to determine that capacity to consent and what kind of criteria might that be based on?

Sorry, the involvement or not of a relative is not relevant to the OP but I was struck by our close neighbour’s laws mentioning this factor.

This site has information on the different countries’ ages of consent.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-consent-by-country

DemiColon · 15/04/2023 21:50
I also think this is talking about people under 18, rather than 16, which is significant to me. (I may be wrong here but that is how I am reading it and a lot of UN stuff seems to see 18 as the appropriate age of majority.) There are a heck of a lot of people who have sex, willingly, before they are 18.

I doubt that. The age of consent is way below 18 and below 16 in many countries. It is shocking to see France and Germany’s for example. Easy to see men made the laws. In France the age of consent is only 18 where a relative is involved (among others) making it seem as though French law reflects that a relative’s involvement is to be expected.

Well this is a slip in the very wrong direction. Very worrying. So wrong.

But why does that make this the appropriate vehicle to decide on a universal minimum age of consent? If there should be a universal minimum age of consent to sex this isn't the group of people who should be thinking about it. It would be a totally different field of expertise and would need looking at from a totally different angle.

It would also be ridiculous to bury something like that in a document about the ethical limits of criminal law.

Not a UN report . Icj here is an NGO

https://www.icj.org/about/

The UN are involved but it’s not a UN publication, is it? It’s published under the ICJ and is endorsed by UNAIDS, not the UN as a whole.

Even if it is a UN document and if the idea of a universal minimum age of consent to sex were a good idea, the lack of a UN declaration on what that age should be doesn’t mean this endeavor should have come up with one. If the UN ought to be coming up with a minimum age of consent to sex, it should be doing that in a much wider capacity than the limits of the ethical use of criminal law in a few specifics areas. The domains of expertise and the focus of the project would be entirely different.

Sorry but this document was the work of the UN, too. Wasn't it? I thought so. Therefore it does seem odd that they'd have a view on consent to marriage and not to sex as well, given that child marriage accelerates risk to female children of dying in childbirth. That's why they have a view on child marriage SFAIK. And that's why this is odd.

www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2023/march/20230308_new-legal-principles-decriminalization

The International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) along with UNAIDS and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) officially launched a new set of expert jurist legal principles to guide the application of international human rights law to criminal law.

www.unaids.org/en/whoweare/about

UNAIDS is a model for United Nations reform and is the only cosponsored Joint Programme in the United Nations system. It draws on the experience and expertise of 11 United Nations system Cosponsors and is the only United Nations entity with civil society represented on its governing body.

www.un.org/en/global-issues/aids

UNAIDS is an innovative joint venture of the United Nations family, which brings together the efforts and resources of 11 United Nations system organizations to unite the world against AIDS. These are: UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank.

I disagree that it doesn’t make sense, but regardless, the UN not having a view on a global age of consent isn’t the fault of the International Commission of Jurists and it wouldn’t be appropriate of the ICJ to come up with a view on that since that isn’t their domain.

These are guidelines on principles to consider when creating laws that are solely aimed at where it would be unethical (in their opinion) for the law to criminalize people. Different countries will implement that differently and have different opinions on what makes a child capable of consenting so may have very different approaches from the UK or similar countries on how to do that.

But then how to explain the fact the UN does have a position on the minimum age for marriage (the UN says it's 18)? It doesn't make sense to have a view on that and not on the age of consent for sex.

They don’t recommend any laws at all. They do explicitly say that enforcement of criminal law should reflect the capacity of a child to consent, not just consider if the child consented.

These are guidelines on principles to consider when creating laws that are solely aimed at where it would be unethical (in their opinion) for the law to criminalize people. Different countries will implement that differently and have different opinions on what makes a child capable of consenting so may have very different approaches from the UK or similar countries on how to do that.

They also don't force a country to do so, and could be interpreted as "she consented and therefore he shouldn't be in the dock" regardless of her age.

The guidelines don’t prevent countries from determining that, for instance, a 12 year old could never have the maturity to consent to sex (as the UK does) and so a s/he consented defense is not possible.

I agree with the concerns re: passing on STDs. I think criminal law can ethically be applied to reckless behaviour that harms others. I haven’t spent enough time looking at the medical bit. There did seem to be some caveats there but I only skimmed.

YankeeDad explains my concerns better than I can. I note that you seem to have no rebuttal for him.

The report doesn’t assume any age of consent at all. It defines people as children until they are 18. It is written for countries across the globe, whether they have an age of consent or not and whatever that age of consent is.

Have just reread your comment with the proposed replacement and the Principle 16 in the report more closely.

There are a couple of things I realised - one is that you seem to be stating that the existence of an age of consent law creates the lack of mental maturity to consent to sex. Is that your position? That a child’s mental maturity is actually, not just legally, defined by the law? Because if so that is, frankly, nuts and there is no way a legal guideline that is supposed to be taken seriously across the world should take that position. The law is a construct, it can create legal fictions but it can’t alter reality.

Also, I realised the principle is more tightly written than I initially thought. It doesn’t seem to stop prosecution for having sex with a child, only prosecution for having non-consensual sex with a child if the child has the mental capacity (or maturity) to consent and did so. I.e. it requires countries to distinguish in their legal code between sex where a minor has the mental capacity to consent and does so, and situations where they don’t consent with different offences. It also doesn’t require a country to follow the victim’s preference when it comes to prosecution, just to allow them to be heard, so the guideline allows for prosecution in more cases than your proposed wording.

1. We already have Fraser guidelines for that.

1. Abortions aren't sex, so it's not a valid comparison. No one ever died or ended up with a baby from not having sex.

1. Doctors are liable for misconduct relating to abortions, not an adult who booked the appointment on a child's behalf.

What if the 39 year old was the Teacher or GP organising a 20 week abortion for a 16 year old on their 16th birthday?