Maud de Boer-Buquicchio


Maud de Boer-Buquicchio is a Dutch jurist and former UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. She served as Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe from 2002 and retired from the post in 2012 and was succeeded by Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni.
De Boer-Buquicchio was born in Hoensbroek, Netherlands, and studied French and French literature, and later law at Leiden University. She specialized in international relations and labor law, obtaining her degree in 1969 with a thesis on the equality of treatment between men and women under European Community law.
De Boer-Buquicchio joined the Council of Europe in 1969, and joined the legal Secretariat of the European Commission of Human Rights. She later worked in a variety of positions in the Council of Europe system, including in the private office of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and as Deputy Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights. She was elected Deputy Secretary General in 2002, and re-elected in 2007.

Philanthropy

De Boer-Buquicchio is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, a global nonprofit organization that combats child sexual exploitation, child pornography, and child abduction.
She was elected President of Missing Children Europe in 2013, a position she took over from former Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, Sir Francis Jacobs.

Personal life

De Boer-Buquicchio is married and has three sons.

Press conference at Tokyo

On 8 May, 2014, De Boer-Buquicchio was appointed Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. From 12 to 18 May the following year she visited Armenia to investigate violence against children..
From 19 to 26 October 2015, De Boer-Buquicchio traveled around Japan for eight days to investigate child trade, sexual exploitation, production of child pornography etc., and she held a press conference at Japan National Press Club in Tokyo on 26 October to report the results.
, then a member of the Japanese House of Councillors, claimed that De Boer-Buquicchio's statements contained many prejudices, mistakes and misunderstandings:
De Boer-Buquicchio said that she had been misheard by the translator; she had said "thirteen percent" and the translator had heard "thirty percent". On 2 November 2015, MOFA issued a complaint to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights over De Boer-Buquicchio's comment of 26 October, and asked her to disclose objective data for the claim of thirteen percent. MOFA asked OHCHR to disclose the data from which De Boer-Buquicchio alleged 13%.on 7 November 2015.
On 11 November 2015 MOFA received a letter from De Boer-Buquicchios, in which she admitted that there were no objective data supporting the 13% figure, and effectively withdrew her comments.

Report on surrogacy

In a report to the UN General Assembly released in September 2019, De Boer-Buquicchio urged states to ratify surrogacy agreements contracted abroad, claiming that "a strict interpretation of the notion of the sale or trafficking of children as a criminal offence can have dire consequences". She also urged that homosexual couples should be allowed to use surrogacy in order to become parents.