How could an international commission of legal experts recommend revisiting the age of consent?
Recently, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) published a report advocating for significant revisions to criminal law, such as decriminalizing prostitution, intentional transmission of HIV, and purchasing and possessing drugs for personal use. Most notably, the report also calls to re-examine laws relating to consensual sexual conduct involving children under the age of majority and people with disabilities who ordinarily cannot “consent.”
The report states in part:
“Consensual sexual conduct…may not be criminalized in any circumstances… Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.”
What’s the controversy?
After publication of this report, several media stories declared that it was “misinformation” to characterize that the report included sexual activities between adults and minors. The ICJ published a clarification asserting the report does not call for this.
However, other human rights organizations have pointed out that the plain language of the report suggests otherwise. Specifically, multiple areas of the report reference adolescents’ “evolving capacity to consent,” state that adolescents can consent to sexual conduct “in fact, if not in law,” and assert that enforcement of criminal law should not apply when these sexual acts are “consensual.” In each of these sections, the report does not reference any limitations on the age of the other person engaging in this “consensual” act.
The ICJ is a group of 60 judges and attorneys from around the world who seek to influence legislative reform and impact judicial decision-making. Although the ICJ’s mission calls for upholding the rule of law, this report instead outlines strategies to upend the rule of law and dismantle whole sectors of the criminal justice system.
Children and consent
By law, children cannot consent to sexual conduct with adults. Proposals to recognize otherwise should be classified as what they are: an attempt to advocate for revising age of consent laws.
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