Did the World Economic Forum develop a treaty including "pedophiles" in the "legally protected minority" category? No, that's not true: The site that posted the claim included a disclaimer that it makes "NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ... ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION ... CONTAINED ON THE SITE." Lead Stories found no evidence such a treaty ever existed. The publications boosting the claim did not cite any World Economic Forum documents or announcements either.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram where it was published on July 13, 2024. It opened:
this is being reported While we've been
distracted by everything else they came for the children
The post shared what looked like a screenshot of an article titled:
LGBTQ+ Leaders Sign WEF Treaty to Accept Pedophiles as 'Legally Protected Minority'
This is what it looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Jul 22 13:52:21 2024 UTC)
The screenshot from the post showed the July 7, 2024, headline of an article (archived here) that appeared on The People's Voice -- a website with a lengthy record of publishing false stories.
The People's Voice story did not link to the World Economic Forum website and did not include a copy of the purported "treaty."
On the day it published the claim, the same article was also posted by a Croatian-language website (archived here). It failed to offer any evidence corroborating the claim, too.
A search for the words "pedophiles" and "pedophilia" (archived here) across the WEF website produced two results. One (archived here) was an article titled "We need to do something about fake news". It discussed "active misinformation" that "is packaged to look as if it comes from a serious news site." It referred to the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy about a purportedly existing pedophilia ring as an example of such a phenomenon. The second result (archived here) was a Spanish-language version of the same piece about misinformation.
The WEF press release section (archived here) said nothing about the purported "treaty", either.
A search across Google News' index of thousands of websites for the keywords seen here (archived here) did not show any credible reporting corroborating the claim.
Lead Stories reached out to WEF for comment. If we receive a response, this article will be updated as appropriate.
Over the years, the World Economic Forum has been a frequent target of numerous conspiracies. For example, in April 2024, Lead Stories wrote that the WEF did not declare that "pedophilia" is sexual orientation or that it must be added to LGBTQ+.
Other Lead Stories fact checks about it can be found here.
The People's Voice site describes itself as a resource "comprised of various web pages operated by Fact Checked Limited," but it has nothing to do with fact-checking.
As of this writing, its website contained a liability disclaimer, saying:
FACT CHECKED LIMITED AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, TIMELINESS, AND ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND RELATED GRAPHICS CONTAINED ON THE SITE FOR ANY PURPOSE. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, ALL SUCH INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND RELATED GRAPHICS ARE PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND.
It was previously reviewed by other fact-checking organizations, including CheckYourFact and LogicallyFacts.
