Editorial: Ban Porn And Safeguard Our Children

The possible ban or regulation of pornographic sites and materials in the country will soon be up for discussions in Parliament.

Leading this commendable move is Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection Lynda Tabuya.

Even while she was on the opposite side of the house, Ms Tabuya was very vocal about Fiji’s accessibility to pornography sites and the potential social ills that come with it.

Now in Government, she hopes to make the change needed to protect, especially the vulnerable, on the risks that pornographic materials can have on Fijians.

Access to pornographic materials have long been a topic of debate in politics such as impinging on the right to freedom of expression and the right to live one’s life.

But more recently, given Fiji’s rape and sexual violence statistics at a ridiculous high, the urgency to drown the causes that lead to it has never been more pressing.

One way to regulate, if not ban access of pornographic materials was highlighted by Ms Tabuya.

In February, the French government introduced a digital certification system that mandates pornography websites to implement stringent measures for verifying the age of their site visitors, starting in September.

Reuters reported that according to existing laws in France and several European countries, individuals must be at least 18 years old to gain access to pornography. However, a significant issue arises as there is a lack of robust control mechanisms, enabling users to easily input fictitious birth dates on their screens.

With this move, people who want to visit the porn sites would have to install an application for government-licensed digital certification on their mobile phones to prove that they are at least 18 years old.

Sites which do not comply risk being banned from publishing in France.

Anti-porn advocate and founder of City Women & City Free from Porn, Letitita Shelton, argues: “There is a direct line between porn, rape, incest, sex trafficking, prostitution and pornography is at the bottom of all of it,.” 

“The government needs to do something more, the parents need to start talking to their kids, every kid has a phone and this rubbish about taboo, we cannot be silent about it.”

At the cusp of this is protection of vulnerable individuals.

Regulating pornography can help safeguard children and minors from being exposed to explicit content that may have harmful psychological and emotional effects on their development.

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