2024-09-10 12:19:29
Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty urged Georgian MPs not to finally approve the anti-LGBT+ community law. O’Flaherty sent a letter to the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament today, AFP reported.
On September 4, the parliament in Tbilisi approved the second reading of the bill “On protection of family values and minors”, which aims to ban “LGBT+ propaganda” in education and on television. In order to enter into force, the legal text must also be approved in the third reading, writes BTA.
This text “provides a legal basis for discrimination against persons from the LGBT+ community and appears to be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights,” O’Flaherty warned in his letter.
He recalls that it is clear from the practice of the European Court of Human Rights that democratic societies “reject any stigmatization based on sexual orientation”, “are built on the equal dignity of individuals and thrive thanks to the diversity that they perceive not as a threat, but as a source of enrichment”.
Michael O’Flaherty also says he is “concerned about the prejudice against LGBT+ people that exists in certain sectors of Georgian society, including political leaders”, and the fact that the bill, mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity along with incest, perpetuates the stigmatization and discrimination faced by members of the LGBT+ community.
In recent years, the governing Georgian Dream party in the former Soviet republic of the Caucasus has deepened its conservative and anti-Western bias, notes AFP.
Opponents accuse “Georgian Dream” of wanting to get closer to Moscow and putting the country’s expected accession to the European Union at risk.