Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 23/05/2023
As part of the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is striving to make sure minors in all countries get equitable, quality and free education, an important part of which is sex education.
The Media and Culture Society Stop the Lying media published on its website on 8 March a video of the talk show Vera in Živko odprti mikrofon (Vera and Živko open mic) in which the presenter claims that the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organisation (WHO) think “every child should have a sexual partner”. The same day the society published the video on its Facebook page.
The presenter showed a screenshot of sex education standards in Europe published in 2010 by the WHO regional office for Europe and the German federal centre for health education.
The authors of the standards explain in the introduction to the document that the standards are the first step towards a common sex education framework in all 53 countries in the European region. They emphasise that the document is merely an aid for legislators and education experts.
The core part of the standards is a table that summarises the knowledge, skills and understanding of the human body, sexuality and relationships that children and youths are supposed to attain by age 4, 6, 9, 12, 15 and later. The document does not state that minors should have sexual partners.
Sex education guidelines to help countries integrate sex education into education programmes were also issued by UNESCO in 2018. They were developed as part of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member states in 2015 with the aim of empowering children and adolescents with the knowledge and values that will later help them develop respectful social and sexual relationships. UNESCO says that content should always be appropriate for the age group it is aimed at.
The guidelines do not state that children should have sexual partners.
In the video published on 8 May on the Stop the Lying Media website the presenter also referred to a post on Stopworldcontrol.com, whose authors claim that the WHO and the UN believe that children should have sexual partners and that they should start having sex as soon as possible. On 11 May this year, a Reuters fact-checking team found that the Stopworldcontrol.com report is false.
The Media and Culture Society Stop the Lying Media, whose legal representative is Matjaž Motaln, was registered in November 2021, according to data by the Agency for Public Legal Records. Its activities are designated as “other unclassified member organisations” and it is not entered in the Culture Ministry’s media registry.
The society’s Facebook page was created in January 2021 and currently has more than 55,000 followers. The video in which the presenter talks about WHO and UN positions on sex education was viewed 4,400 times by 16 May and shared 180 times, including in the Facebook groups Transvakseri (Transvaxxers), Necenzurirano (Uncensored) and Proti umetnemu ustvarjanju energetske krize! (Against the artificial creation of climate crisis!) which have more than 11,000 members combined.
In 2021 the Facebook page Stop the Lying Media also shared a video in which an American family doctor claimed that the probability of a miscarriage in women who were vaccinated against Covid-19 in the first trimester of pregnancy was eight times higher than normal. As Razkrinkavanje.si determined at the time, the claim is false.
In response to the findings by Razkrinkavanje.si, the society shared three screenshots of sex education guidelines issued by UNESCO. None of them claim that children should have a sexual partner.
The claim that the WHO and UN think children should have sexual partners is false.