Proposition 53K1927

Projet de loi portant assentiment à la Convention du Conseil de l'Europe sur la protection des enfants contre l'exploitation et les abus sexuels, faite à Lanzarote le 25 octobre 2007.

General information ¶

Submitted by

The Senate

Submission date

Aug. 23, 2011

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

Council of Europe international agreement child child protection children's rights sexual violence

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Willem-Frederik Schiltz (Open Vld) abstained from voting.

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Discussion ¶

Jan. 12, 2012 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

The rapporteur, Mr. De Croo, refers to his written report.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply like to emphasize that the vote on the bill approving the Convention of the Council of Europe on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, made in Lanzarote, is important since it is the subject of one of the recommendations of the Committee on Sexual Abuse which closed its debate last year. The work of this committee continues, which I welcome. I would like to thank all the members of the Justice Committee who voted for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I will not draw it for more than five minutes, but this is important enough to say something about it.

After all, our country has faced the abomination of child sexual abuse more than once in a brutal way. Let us think of the emblematic moments of the Dutrouxa affair and the abuse scandal in the Church. Our collective disgust for it, and the priority we wish to give to preventing and combating sexual abuse of children, led, among other things, to the inclusion in our Constitution, in the year 2000, of an article that affirms the moral, physical, mental and sexual integrity of children.

This convention of the Council of Europe actually lists what a government must do all to effectively guarantee that right to sexual integrity. This includes, for example, the criminalization of acts of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. In it, the Convention is quite detailed, for example, by calling for a specific punishment for adult contacts with children for the purpose of sexual exploitation through, among other things, information and communication technologies. In the latter, we think of chatsites, Facebook, and so on.

It also concerns effective prosecution, for which the Convention provides, among other things, that rules relating to professional secrecy should not preclude an obligation to report suspicions of sexual abuse. These include preventive measures, including screening of persons seeking to pursue a profession that requires regular contact with children and encouraging prevention policies in the private sector such as the ICT or tourism sector. Of course, the convention pays special attention to the victims – the children themselves – including by prescribing aid lines for children.

There is no doubt that Belgium already fulfils most of the obligations under this Convention. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to conduct a thorough review of legislation and practice to ensure that this applies to all obligations under the Treaty.

The treaty dates from 2007. A ratification in 2012 is therefore not so incredibly late for a mixed treaty that needs to be approved by all parliaments. There are 17 countries that have ratified the treaty before us. The treaty has also been in force since 2010.

So we have actually missed the opportunity to profile Belgium as one of the countries that give it the highest priority through a quick ratification.

What matters is what we do to ⁇ the objectives of the treaty, and I assume that we all agree that we should aim as high as possible in that area.

I am very pleased that we can ratify this convention today. This was one of the recommendations that I had wanted to see introduced in our sex abuse committee debates. Indeed, this Convention, already in 2007, presented all the ingredients to allow us to follow these painful situations, since it speaks of prevention, of sanctions, but it also describes the means to accompany both the victims and the perpetrators of these abuses. There are really a lot of interesting thoughts and suggestions to find there. It is therefore a real pleasure to know that Belgium will ratify, after other European countries, this Convention.