A/65/162 14. Comprehensive sexual education is extremely important in view of the threat of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, especially for groups at risk and persons in particularly vulnerable situations, such as women and girls exposed to gender-based violence or persons in difficult financial circumstances. 5 In paragraph 16 of its General Comment No. 3, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasized that “effective HIV/AIDS prevention requires States to refrain from censoring, withholding or intentionally misrepresenting health-related information, including sexual education and information, and that […] States parties must ensure that children have the ability to acquire the knowledge and skills to protect themselves and others as they begin to express their sexuality”. 15. There is no valid excuse for not providing people with the comprehensive sexual education that they need in order to lead a dignified and healthy life. Enjoyment of the right to sexual education plays a crucial preventive role and may be a question of life or death. Recognizing the need for the world’s population to be educated in order to prevent HIV/AIDS, the Special Rapporteur also wishes to point out that restricting sexual education to the issue of sexually transmitted diseases gives a limited view of sexuality. In his opinion, reducing sexual education to these aspects may create an erroneous association between sexuality and disease, which is as harmful as associating it with sin. C. Concept and scope of the human right to education for sexuality 16. The UNESCO International Guidelines on Sexuality Education define it as “an age-appropriate, culturally sensitive and comprehensive approach to sexuality education that include programmes providing scientifically accurate, realistic, non-judgmental information. Comprehensive sexuality education provides opportunities to explore one’s own values and attitudes and to build decisionmaking, communication and risk reduction skills about all aspects of sexuality”.2 Similarly, the Special Rapporteur considers that pleasure in and enjoyment of sexuality, in the context of respect for others, should be one of the goals of comprehensive sexual education, abolishing guilt feelings about eroticism that restrict sexuality to the mere reproductive function. 17. In order to be comprehensive, sexual education must provide the tools needed for decision-making in relation to a sexuality corresponding to the lifestyle which each human being chooses in the context of his or her situation. For this reason, the sexual education given to children and young people is crucial. In fact, decision makers involved in formal education should consider sexual education as an essential way of enhancing education in general and promoting quality of life. It has been said that education for sexuality is “an essential part of a good curriculum”.2 18. However much we try to avoid it, we are always sexually informed, by action or by omission, at school, in the family, through the media, etc. Thus deciding not to offer sexual education at teaching centres is opting for an omissive form of sexual education, that leaves girls, boys and adolescents on their own as regards the type of knowledge and messages, generally negative, that they receive on sexuality. When sexual education is not explicitly provided, in practice education follows the so- __________________ 5 6 UNAIDS, AIDS epidemic update, December 2009 (available at http://data.unaids.org/ pub/Report/2009/JC1700_Epi_Update_2009_en.pdf). 10-46213