False: World Economic Forum promotes pedophilia and claims 'pedophiles will save the world.'

Context

Ahead of the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, several false and misleading claims are going viral on social media. On January 3, the fake news website NewsPunch published an article claiming that the WEF promotes pedophilia. The article was also embedded with a Rumble video by The People's Voice—NewsPunch's sister outlet—making similar claims. The article "World Economic Forum Declares Peodophiles 'Will Save Humanity'" and The People's Voice video were soon picked up by other websites and widely shared on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Stop World Control, a website that claims to be "a tool to awaken humanity to the globalist agenda of world tyranny," also shared the video on its website with the title, '"Pedophiles will save the world," claims the World Economic Forum.'" Several social media users have since shared the video and the article with the claim that the WEF is "calling for the decriminalization of sex with children." 

In Fact

Logically did not come across any statement, press release, or article promoting pedophilia or advocating for its decriminalization on the official website of the WEF.

The NewsPunch article and The People's Voice video also claimed that the WEF had posted a tweet defending pedophilia. The tweet allegedly read: "Age gap love laws violate human rights." However, there is no record of such a tweet being shared from the verified account of the WEF. The screenshot of the alleged tweet doesn't show the date and time the Tweet was posted, a standard function on all Tweets. Therefore, the purported screenshot attributed to the WEF is most likely fabricated.  

The viral video and the article also claimed that the WEF had declared that pedophiles "are being created by nature in increasingly large numbers for a reason" and that WEF chairman Klaus Schwab called pedophiles "nature's gift to humanity." However, the WEF denied these unsubstantiated claims. In reply to an email, the Head of Media and Member of the Executive Committee for WEF, Yann Zopf, told Logically, "Klaus Schwab (Founder-Executive Chairman of the WEF) and/or the World Economic Forum have never made such statements. This is fake news." 

In its attack against the Switzerland-based international organization, the viral article also referred to "a research paper presented at the WEF in Davos" that supposedly argued "pedophile phenomenon represents nature's attempt to cleanse the earth and "save humanity" from itself." While NewsPunch failed to provide any link to the supposed paper, Logically did not come across any research, study, or article linking the promotion of pedophilia with the WEF. We also trawled the WEF's website and social media accounts but found no mention of the research paper.

The viral video by The People's Voice also made unsubstantiated claims that France had recently passed a law stating that "a child can consent to have sex with an adult." This claim was based on a misleading article published in August 2018 by the fake news website Your News. The claim has been debunked by multiple fact-checking organizations who confirmed that the French government did not pass any such law and did not repeal an existing age of consent. 

It should be noted that almost all websites claiming that the WEF promotes pedophilia are not credible sources of information. Website rating site Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC) has categorized NewsPunch as a "Questionable Source" and noted that it "has zero credibility due to the routine publishing of fake news." While the rating of the website Stop World Control is still pending review by MBFC, preliminary findings have earned it "codes" (labels used by MBFC researchers) like "conspiracy," "pseudoscience," and "questionable."

The Verdict

There is no evidence that the WEF called for the decriminalization of pedophilia or advocated sex with children. A WEF spokesperson has called such claims "fake news." Therefore, we mark this claim false.