Brazil supports proposal that parents can impose religious or moral education...

With support from Brazil, Chile and the United States, Bolivia presented a proposal to the OAS (Organization of American States) that would authorize parents to impose religious or moral education on their children. The idea is to include an addendum to an agency resolution on human rights.

The text proposed to the resolution, discussed on Tuesday (20) at the OAS General Assembly, suggests “the right or freedom of parents to have their children receive moral and religious education in accordance with their beliefs”.

According to civil society organizations, the text opens the door for parents to adopt home education and prevent children from learning content such as the theory of evolution. The proposal would also allow parents to interfere in hiring teachers based on their religious beliefs.

Under criticism from the delegations of Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Peru and Costa Rica, the language of the text was softened, noting that the greater interest of children in relation to education must be respected.

But the passage on moral education according to the parents’ beliefs was still maintained in the text under discussion. The General Assembly ends on Wednesday (21).

“Bolivia’s proposal is quite worrying, mainly because it includes moral education, which goes beyond the [ensino] religious and becomes a Trojan Horse, since it opens a wide interpretive margin for other issues “, says Camila Asano, program director for the NGO Conectas Human Rights.

Sought several times by the report, Itamaraty did not respond to requests for comment.

The support of Brazil and the USA to the proposal is part of the International Alliance for Religious Freedom, launched last year. The initiative aims to defend all religions, but the theme was embraced especially by more active evangelicals and Catholics.

The position in the OAS also refers to the fight against “cristophobia” highlighted by Jair Bolsonaro at the UN General Assembly in September.

In his speech, the Brazilian president made an “appeal to the entire international community for religious freedom and the fight against Christophobia” and stated that Brazil is a “Christian and conservative country, which has its base in the family”, although the Constitution establishes the secularism of the Brazilian State.

The Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, shared on Tuesday, on Twitter, a post by an Argentine anti-abortion activist who asked the OAS to introduce “the family perspective in the development of legal norms”.

In the message, one of many in the campaign with the hashtags #OEAproVida and #AMisHijoslosEducoYo, the activist “demands respect for the inalienable right of parents to choose the education that their children receive, because this is not a prerogative of the State, but of each mother and father “.

In another post in the #OEAProVida campaign, activists claim that “Covid-19 demonstrated that the family is much more necessary and effective than the state”. “The family functioned as a school, hospital and economic support. Stable homes, with father and mother present, gave more welfare to all its members.”

In the case of Chile, the interest in the resolution is justified because the text would guarantee autonomy for religious schools to choose their teachers. The country’s government was denounced by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) last year for firing a nun who was a religion teacher at a municipal school after she revealed that she is a lesbian.