UNICEF scrubs website of sexual programs for children after scrutiny

By Lisa Correnti

NEW YORK, September 5 (C-Fam) The UN agency tasked with the care and protection of children around the world has pulled down sexual images and curricula from their website after a recent report exposed sexually explicit programs targeting children.

The report published by the Center for Family and Human Rights was released just as the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is seeking endorsement from Member States for their new 3-year strategic plan. The UNICEF executive board consisting of 36 countries has been meeting in New York all week.

Among the pages of information UNICEF purged from its website is a comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) program directed at children in Ukraine. The curriculum, titled “Adulthood without Secrets,” for children ages 10-14 explains the fluidity of one’s sexual orientation during life, including identifying as homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual.

In the section on “sex and relationships,” sex is defined as “one of the ways people interact, when they express their feelings for each other through physical contact.” Sex is described as something that is an “important part of a relationship” that “helps express intimate feelings and togetherness between partners” and can “strengthen relationships.” Children are instructed on the “criteria” for “good sex” which is “sex during which you pleasure from all the processes and reach orgasm” and the necessity of foreplay.

In recent years, “comprehensive sexuality education” has become highly controversial in multilateral fora as the content of CSE programs like these has been exposed. UN agencies and western countries have been unsuccessful is adding CSE language to UN resolutions, but this has not stopped UNICEF or other UN agencies from implementing it in country programs, often in partnership with groups like the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

UNICEF also pulled down the CSE program review conducted in Thailand in 2016. The UNICEF review was critical of Thailand’s narrow program focus on the prevention of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and HIV.  Recommendations were made to include topics related to gender, sexual rights and citizenship, sexual and gender diversity, safe abortion, and safe sex for same-sex couples.

In conducting its review, UNICEF asked Thai children to draw pictures of their understanding of sexuality. Researchers opined that 70-80% of the images reflected “heteronormativity” and that “rarely depicted topics” from the drawings were LGBT issues, mutual pleasure, sexual equity, pornography and “sex work.”

UNICEF’s 2026-2029 draft strategic plan has upset many countries due to the attempt to promote non-agreed concepts with the inclusion of the controversial phrase “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR). Member States have never accepted the term in the General Assembly, yet UNICEF is seeking a mandate to promote harmful gender ideology, sexual rights for children, and abortion through the endorsement of a strategic plan that includes the term.

In a UNICEF meeting on Wednesday, C-Fam learned that the United States proposed that the Member States refrain from “endorsing” the proposed strategic plan and only “note” it due to the inclusion of SRHR.  The UNICEF representative falsely responded that UNICEF only promotes HIV prevention and treatment under the SRHR rubric.

The UNICEF board decision on the strategic plan will be made on Friday, September 5.

This is the second time UNICEF has pulled a controversial report from their website after C-Fam exposed it. In 2021 UNICEF pulled back and edited a paper that claimed children may not be harmed by viewing pornography.

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