On Monday the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is due to release a new draft proposal of its controversial international Sexuality Education guidelines.
UNESCO pulled an earlier draft of the guidelines from its website in June after they sparked international controversy and criticism from conservative and religious groups: Conservative commentators in America have been particularly vocal about that draft's suggestion of discsussion about masturbation for children as young as 5 years old.
The guidelines are the result of a two-year effort in support of UNESCO's HIV and AIDS prevention strategy and its attempts to promote sex education as a "demonstrably effective programme for young people" and to "promote cooperation and sharing of experiences among key stakeholders.
It's hard enough to get a small American community to agree on any kind of sex education standards, much less to build consensus and cooperation around international guidelines, but this is serious business, and UNESCO's guidelines argue that sex education helps to postpone the onset of sexual activity among young people, reduce the number of sexual partners and unprotected sex they are having, and decrease the rate of sexually transmitted infection and unplanned pregnancy.
Conservatives in America and around the world – presumably still convinced that abstinence-only education programs are the only way to go on these fronts – are irked by the guidelines' emphasis on condom use and upset over frank discussion of masturbation, homosexuality, and abortion proposed in the guidelines. UNESCO's Sexuality Education guidelines, coordinated with other U.N. agencies including UNICEF and the World Health Organization, are intended to help U.N. member countries improve sex education and sexual health, particularly among young people and in the developing world, to reduce illegal abortions, and to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infection, including HIV and AIDS.
A final draft of the UNESCO Sexuality Education guidelines, originally scheduled for release on Monday, is now due out at the end of the year. Stay tuned: Should be some interesting discussion about them in the next week. I'm guessing for this draft they've probably gone ahead and taken out the part about teaching 5 year-olds about masturbation.
Comments
It seems like there are always Conservatives with pregnant teenagers... so maybe they should re-consider?
Another hack editorial creating conservative dogma out of thin air like the false idea that all conservatives want abstinence only (which only existed in the eyes of leftist liberals anyway). Most conservatives accept an honest science based education of reproductive sex and contraception with an acknowledgement that the only way to ensure absolute prevention of STDs or unwanted parenthood is abstinence. It is so interesting to many of us that liberals are so convinced that no one can exercise any self control to excuse their own lack of it when the facts often speak otherwise. The vast majority of kids wait until late teens to have sex and nearly 50% of Americans still wait until marriage.
The problem so many conservative people have with the UN program has nothing to do with abstinence. It has to do with indoctrination and propaganda. So many comprehensive sex Ed programs encourage deviant and unhealthy behavior or attempt to politicize the discussion or hide behavior from parent
Boys start masturbating earlier than their parents (particularly mothers) imagine. An age-appropriate discussion at the age of 5 is NOT out of line. As usual the Conservatives are in denial. In the US the highest rate of teen pregnancies is in the "Bible Belt."
i found this article via www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com, Alan Watt gives a great talk about this article and others related to it. He mentioned something about the prov of Ontario making certain topics mandatory even though they conflict with religon based schools. Sounds like mandatory endoctrination to me, don't worry, the establishment loves us and is only looking out for us. Should we nicely swallow the feeding tube that our tax dollars provide to be shoved down our throats?? The mp3 is dated apr 21 with links to this article and others, a must listen!
Justine, yours is well meaning sentiment, and I agree that something needs to be done in increasing awareness, but you utterly avoid looking at the big picture. First, it's not about pregnant teens, and never was. I'm in my early 30s, I have friends in their early - mid 20s, siblings still in their late teens. We've had decades of sexed, each generation getting more intense sex ed at earlier ages. This has done nada to lower rates of teen pregnancy or VD. This is a fact. Both; considerably higher than when I left high school in 1993. Not too long ago. Add the internet and a sex soaked culture then only a liar or one totally ignorant of the culture could argue that teens do not get huge quantities of sexuality information. We are not talking about young adult and older teens, these guidelines are meant to apply to increasingly younger groups. This is what alarms parents.
Claiming otherwise is either sincere delusion and ignorance or purposeful disingenuous mendacity.
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