3.1 Legislative measures

🎯 Which aspects are addressed (or criminalised) by laws, as opposed to other non-binding measures? 

Do you recall the categories of risks which children face? We mentioned five categories – inappropriate content, inappropriate contact, inappropriate conduct, health-related risks, and consumer-related issues – as well as the more heinous crime of sexual exploitation and abuse which these risks can lead to.

When it comes to legislation, some laws make certain content, contact, or conduct illegal, with varying degrees of interpretations from country to country. Certain contact- and conduct-related activities, in fact, are punishable as criminal offences in many countries. This largely depends on the type of risk or behaviour we are referring to.

For instance, when it comes to sexual exploitation and abuse, there are a number of primary instruments on an international level, which have inspired other instruments on a regional level. The international instruments include:

• The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which, among other provisions, obliges states to ‘undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse’ (Article 34).
• The Second Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s guidelines), which imposes further obligations on states concerning child sexual abuse content, among other topics.
• The Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime (known also as the Budapest Convention), which obliges countries to criminalise every act related to child pornography (Article 9).
• The Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (known as the Lanzarote Convention), which requires states to prevent all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children and to protect children (Article 4); to encourage the reporting of suspicion of sexual abuse (Article 12); and to support the setting up of helplines (Article 13).

The International Labour Organization’s Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the worst forms of Child Labour, which calls on members to take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of ‘the worst forms of child labour’, including prostitution (Article 3).