DISINFO: Georgia: Draft Child's Right Code To Ban Religious Upbringing
SUMMARY
The draft Code on Rights of the Child, proposed by the ruling Georgian Dream party in Parliament, underscores that “information intended to encourage discrimination” poses threat to children. It is important to understand that in principle, any religious teaching according to which a behaviour or state of any kind, say, homosexuality, is considered a perversion or a gravely immoral condition, can be viewed as information encouraging discrimination.
RESPONSE
A manipulative statement, without foundation in the draft code. The draft code does not indicate how parents should raise their children. Article 16 of the draft code explicitly states that children enjoy “freedoms of belief, religious practice, and conscience,” while parents have the right to “raise their children in accordance with their moral and religious views.” Article 3 of the draft code provides definitions of terms used throughout the text. Clause O: “Information posing threat to children: Information intended to encourage violence, crime, discrimination. Also, information which propagandises use of alcoholic drinks, tobacco, narcotics, and gambling, or which describes in detail violence, killing, and brutal treatment scenes, or which portrays vigilantism as a justified way to attain or restore fairness or justice.” Background: Children's rights and adoption of regulations in the West that aim to cause rifts within the traditional family or place an undue emphasis on sex education are recurring topics or pro-Russian and nationalist media. See EUvsDisinfo's log of Georgia-related disinfo log of similar reports here. The Code on the Rights of the Children’s Rights has become a target of a disinformation campaign, of which some Russia-affiliated groups take advantage to promote their political interests. Mythdetector has reported disinformation about this code earlier: Myths by Georgia and World about Children’s Code and Juvenile Justice 5 Myths about the Code on Rights of the Child On 3 March, Davit Lortkipanidze, director of the Primakov Centre for Georgian-Russian Relations, and Levan Chachua, leader of the right-wing Georgian Idea party, held a rally in front of the UN office in Tbilisi, demanding revocation of the code from Parliament.