A/CONF.189/PC.2/22 page 45 58 Article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes the child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, subject to respect by the State for the guiding role played by the parents. 59 See also, in this context, General Comment No. 22, paragraphs 6 and 8, where the Human Rights Committee indicates that the restrictions provided for in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to its article 18 under paragraph 3 thereof must be strictly interpreted. 60 See E/CN.4/1999/19, para. 68. See also article 28, paragraph 2, of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 61 Opinion No. 346893, Revue universelle des droits de l’homme, vol. 3, No. 4, 17 May 1991, p. 152. 62 Definition given by Henri Capitant in his Vocabulaire juridique and cited by Claude Durand-Prinborgne, La laïcité, Paris Dalloz, 1996, p. 9. The author adds that the literature contains no legal definition of secularity. 63 Michel Combarnous, “L’enfant, l’école et la religion”, La revue administrative, Special No. 2, Le Conseil d’Etat et la liberté religieuse, Paris, PUF, p. 76. 64 They deal more with the “objectives” of education than with its content, the two being, of course, closely linked. See below the formulation used in these instruments. In its General Comment No. 13 the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in fact uses the expression “aims and objectives of education” (E/C.12/1999/10, para. 4). 65 As pointed out, without further commentary, by the Committee in paragraph 4 of its General Comment No. 13, “these objectives reflect the fundamental purposes and principles of the United Nations as enshrined in articles 1 and 2 of the Charter”. Several of those provisions do not concern the question of education, nor for that matter the question of human rights. It is article 1, paragraphs 3 and 4, of the Charter which seem to us most relevant to concerns regarding education. 66 67 See, for example, the 1960 UNESCO Convention (art. 5, para. 1 (a)). This article 7 reproduces the wording of article 8 of the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, dated 20 November 1963, but differs from it in two respects, the first concerning the magnitude of the objective to be attained: article 8 of the Declaration seems more ambitious and aims at “eliminating” discrimination, whereas article 7 of the Convention, probably because of the persistence of discrimination in the world of the 1960s, seems more modest and aims only at “combating prejudices which lead to racial discrimination …”. The ninth preambular paragraph of the 1965 Convention expresses, moreover, alarm at the “manifestations of racial discrimination still in evidence in some areas of the world …”. On the other hand, the scope ratione personae of article 7 of the Convention is