E/CN.4/1995/91/Add.1 page 66 The traditionally recognized right for parents and legal guardians to choose religious education for their children or wards in accordance with their beliefs, which was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina in the Schvartz case of 1957, Judgement No. 239:367, among others, is supplemented by the right of curators. In this connection, it should be recalled that article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, in force in Argentina since 4 January 1991, stipulates that States parties shall respect ’the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ and ’the rights and duties of the parents and, where applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child’. Article 3 states that, without prejudice to the rights to which their members are entitled, churches, denominations or religious communities have very specific rights which are enumerated in four subparagraphs and correspond, respectively, to the provisions of article 6 (a), (b), (d), (i) and (g) of the 1981 United Nations Declaration. In describing the restrictions which may legitimately be placed on religious freedom, article 4 states: ’The only limitations on the exercise of the rights deriving from the freedom of religion and of worship are the right of others to exercise their own freedoms and the limitations necessary for the maintenance of public order, health and morals’. That article should be read in the light of article 12, paragraph 3, of the American Convention; article 18, paragraph 3, of the International Covenant; article 1, paragraph 3, of the Declaration; and article 14, paragraph 3, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, all of which refer to limitations prescribed by law and necessary for protecting public safety, public order, public health and morals and the fundamental freedoms and rights of others. According to two other paragraphs of article 4, in the eye of the law, no exemptions are granted, on the grounds of professing to hold given religious beliefs, to the duty to carry out obligations of a public nature imposed by a Constitution or the law; and the right to conscientious objection is governed by a special law, which implies that it is the authorities’ intention to ensure that the right is guaranteed. The law defines its scope of application by specifying that it does not protect ’activities and entities involved in the study of astrophysical, psychic or parapsychological phenomena, divining, astrology or the dissemination of purely philosophical, humanist or spiritualist values; satanic rites; or with any related experiments that might be conducted’. Without going into the complex and thorny problem posed by the definition of ’religion’, in some manner the draft defines the boundaries outside of which such activities fall.

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