UN proposes new child safety initiative that could ban loli anime and manga

As reported on One Angry Gamer and Sakura Anime News, the UN has proposals to stop the trafficking of underage girls for sex worldwide. It's a noble effort, but one aspect has caught the attention of many Japanese artists and industry professionals: the banning of any drawings or illustrations that sexualise children. This will include anime and in particular, the loli trope.

The contention is that such material normalises the act of sexualising children, and as such should be monitored and banned. The proposal is as follows:

Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Human Rights of the Child (OPSC) – Page 14, Section 56

Child pornography is defined in article 2 OPSC as ‘any representation of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities, regardless of the means used, or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes’. The qualification ‘by whatever means’ reflects the broad range of material available in a variety of media, online and offline. It includes, inter alia: visual material such as photographs, movies, drawings and cartoons; audio representations; any digital media representation; live performances; written materials in print or online; and physical objects such as sculptures, toys, or ornaments.1

The Committee urges States parties to prohibit, by law, child sexual abuse material in any form. The Committee notes that such material is increasingly circulating online, and strongly recommends States parties to ensure that relevant provisions of their Criminal Codes cover all forms of material, including when the acts listed in article 3.1(c) are committed online and including when such material represents realistic representations of non-existing children.

This act would be in line with firms such as Sony, who have started to crack down on PS4 games that contain such imagery. Already games from Japanese translation houses have been banned, and other game series, such as Dead or Alive and Senran Kagura have been affected with censorship.

The objections from Japan mostly seem to revolve around the lack of clarification on what constitutes sexualisation, and critics have claimed that services such as Reddit have banned groups and images that do not contain such material.

This UN proposal follows the lines of similar actions proposed against Japan to ban media depicting sexual violence toward women in 2016. Kumiko Yamada of the Japanese Women's Institute of Contemporary Media Culture openly resisted by stating that not only did women work in the industry, but that it would have a long term and critical financial impact on the same. Journalist Ollie Barder covered this for Forbes.

The wider impact of this proposed legislation, and its potential implementation, have yet to be seen.