Bogoslovska smotra, Vol. 79 No. 2, 2009.
Original scientific paper
The Child's Right to Freedom of Conscience and Religion
Nenad Hlača
; Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Petar Popović
; Diocesan Missionary Seminary »Redemptoris Mater«, Pula, Croatia
Abstract
This article presents an analysis of the right of the child to the freedom of conscience and religion. The introduction seeks to present some characteristics of contemporary children, as well as the importance of the family as the fundamental society in which the child primarily discovers and enjoys certain rights. The child's right has been researched by means of presenting the relevant sources of law necessary for its legal understanding in the world of today. International law gives special attention to the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms along with Protocol No. 1, and of the Treaty between the Holy See with the Republic of Croatia on Cooperation in the Fields of Education and Culture. Also, the provisions of Croatian Family Legislation have been found very revealing with regard to the way which the Republic of Croatia interprets the right in question. It has been affirmed that the child's right is situated inside a specific interrelation with the complementary right of parents to educate a child according to their own religious or philosophical convictions. Throughout the article today's leading and most influential theories of the content of the child's right have been presented. The authors believe that the tendencies of these theoretical approaches are not quite adequate to the true nature of the child-parent relationship. They therefore contribute certain determinations of that relationship and the right in question that seem to set optimal conditions for the realisation of the right according to the whole of the needs that constitute the notion of the well-being of the child. It has been concluded that this approach represents a legitimate interpretation that fully falls within the standards of the provisions of relevant international legislation. The article then presents the compatibility of that approach to current family legislation in Croatia.
Keywords
child; human rights; rights of the child; freedom of conscience and religion; family law
Hrčak ID:
38168
URI
Publication date:
2.7.2009.
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