On 25 October 2007, in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, CETS No. 201, was opened for signature, in English and French, equally authentic, in a single copy deposited with the Secretary General. It is not the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, nor the 2000 Optional Protocol on the sale of children, nor the Budapest Convention on cybercrime. The preamble recalls the Warsaw Action Plan of May 2005 and Article 34 of the UN Convention. Child, in Article 3: any person under 18. Article 1: prevent and combat; protect the rights of victims; promote national and international co-operation. A Committee of the Parties monitors implementation.

Chapters II–V require preventive measures: awareness and training for those who work with children in education, health, social protection, justice, sport and leisure; screening on recruitment; education of children about risks, according to age; campaigns for the public; participation of children, the ICT sector, tourism and civil society. Multidisciplinary social programmes for victims; professionals’ confidentiality rules must not block reporting a suspicion to the competent services. Intervention for persons at risk of reoffending, inside and outside prison, under internal law.

Articles 18–23 require the criminalisation of sexual abuse — including by coercion, by abuse of trust, authority or influence, and within the family — of child prostitution, of producing, offering, distributing, procuring and possessing child-abuse material and of accessing it through information technologies, of the corruption of children and of solicitation by electronic means. Each Party sets the age below which sexual activity with a child is prohibited; Article 18.1.a is not intended to govern consensual activities between minors. It is the first international treaty that treats abuse in the home and family expressly. Liability of legal persons; confiscation; the possibility of closing an establishment or of barring professional or voluntary work with children.

Article 25: jurisdiction over the Party’s territory, ships and aircraft, the nationality of the offender — including acts committed abroad — and, in certain cases, the victim’s habitual residence. Article 32: investigation does not depend on a complaint by the victim. Article 33: limitation periods long enough, having regard to the victim’s age. Article 35: interviews by trained staff, as few as possible, with videotaping admissible as evidence. International co-operation, including extradition and mutual legal assistance, on the offences in the Convention.

Article 45: it enters into force on the first day of the month following the expiry of a period of three months after five expressions of consent, including at least three by member States of the Council of Europe. It entered on 1 July 2010. Article 46 opens accession by States outside the Council, after consultation of the Parties; Tunisia was later the first non-member. Denunciation takes effect on the first day of the month after three months from notification. The 28th Conference of European Ministers of Justice, in Lanzarote, on 25–26 October; on the first day about twenty-five States signed, among them Romania, through Tudor Chiuariu.

Timanfaya National Park, Lanzarote, the place of the opening. Landscape, not the signing room. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

For context: Lanzarote Convention. The text: Council of Europe Convention CETS No. 201.