Legislation Response to Use of Minors' Self-generated Sexual Content for their ICT-facilitated Sexual Coercion

The third Millennium has brought to life new digital contexts of human activities that include positive, negative and even alarming phenomena with regard to human development and safety. Among other things minors’ self-generated content has become a tool for their ICT-facilitated sexual coercion and extortion. Therefore, the national legislations should implement adequate measures to withstand such activities. The paper follows the authors’ report made at the 21st session (June 2018) of the Council of Europe Committee of the Parties to the Convention on Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (Lanzarote Convention). The report focused on the reference in national legislations to ICT-facilitated sexual coercion and/or extortion of children due to use of their self-generated sexually explicit visual content. The paper aims to explore the legal instruments which Member States use to respond to the mentioned challenge, to systematize the above tools and to evaluate them in terms of their compliance with internationally binding legislation. The materials included officially submitted information by 42 Lanzarote Committee Member States. The methodology integrated comparative, descriptive, conceptual, evaluative approaches to the subject matter study. The analysis made it possible to identify typical ways that Lanzarote Committee Member States use to withstand the issue under study. The research relevance stems from the revealed promising national practices regarding the criminalization of minors’ ICT-facilitated sexual coercion that uses their self-generated sexual content.