Which countries explicitly define a 'child' as under 18 in pornography statutes?
Executive summary
International instruments and model laws pushed a clear standard—“child” = anyone under 18—for sexual‑exploitation and child‑pornography rules, but national statutes vary in wording and scope; the EU Framework Decision and long‑standing model legislation explicitly use 18 as the benchmark [1] [2] [3]. Available reporting and reference sources identify Sweden as an explicit national example using “under 18” in its legal treatment of pornographic depictions of minors and show clear statutory or regulatory thresholds (such as performer minimum ages) in countries like Japan, while noting that a comprehensive, jurisdiction‑by‑jurisdiction list is not contained in the provided material [4] [5] [6].
1. International baseline: model laws that say “under 18”
Authoritative model legislation compiled by experts and international organizations consistently defines “child” for the purposes of child‑pornography offenses as “anyone under the age of 18,” and those documents explicitly recommend that national laws mirror that threshold to harmonize protection against sexual exploitation [1] [2]; those models have shaped drafting and reform efforts worldwide but are guidance rather than automatic law in every country [1].
2. Europe: a legal approximation toward 18 across member states
The European Union’s framework measures, adopted to approximate criminal law across Member States, explicitly state that the “child” means any person below the age of 18 and urge member states to ensure national provisions cover sexual exploitation and child‑pornography offenses up to that age, producing a de‑facto European minimum standard even where domestic statutes previously used different consent ages [3].
3. National statutes and concrete examples cited in sources
At the national level, Sweden’s treatment of fictional and real depictions is cited as treating a “child” as a person under 18 (or someone who has not passed puberty) when deciding whether material is pornographic child exploitation, making the under‑18 benchmark explicit in statutory interpretation and enforcement guidance in that reporting [4]. Japan’s regulatory standard for performers sets a minimum age of 18 for participants in pornography and treats some fictional exceptions differently, demonstrating that some countries fix an 18‑year performer threshold even when the broader legal framing for “child” or fictional depictions is more complex [5]. Sources note the United States and most countries criminalize child pornography and that age‑of‑consent provisions vary widely, but the provided Britannica and Wikipedia snapshots explain variation rather than offering a single‑country statutory list in the materials supplied here [7] [6].
4. Why compiling a global, definitive list is difficult from these sources
The supplied references make two things clear: international instruments and model laws push for “under 18,” but domestic codes diverge by wording, by whether they criminalize fictional depictions, by performer‑age rules, and by the interaction with age‑of‑consent laws—so a simple global roster of “countries that explicitly define a child as under 18 in pornography statutes” is not present among the provided documents and would require direct statutory text or national legal databases country‑by‑country to confirm [6] [1] [2] [8].
5. Bottom line: where the evidence in these sources points
Based on the provided reporting, the clearest, directly cited statements are that international model legislation and EU framework law define a child as under 18 for child‑pornography purposes [1] [2] [3] and that Sweden’s law or legal interpretation explicitly uses under‑18 language in the context of pornographic depictions [4]; other national examples (Japan’s performer minimum age, the United States’ strong federal prohibitions) appear in the sources but do not together constitute a validated global checklist in the material supplied here [5] [7]. To produce a complete, country‑by‑country list would require examination of individual statutory texts or a dedicated legal survey beyond the documents provided [8].