Law on Rights of Children

On September 1, 2020, the Law on the Rights of the Child entered into force. Up to date, there was no unified document in Georgia regulating the children’s rights. Therefore, children’s rights until now were protected through the provisions laid down in various laws and normative acts.  However, it should be noted that the Convention on the Rights of the Child obliged the State to dully protect children’s rights; Georgia became a member of the Convention in 1994 and as a result, took an obligation to protect the rights under the Convention.

As a result of the adoption of the Law of Georgia on the Rights of the Child, there was a necessity to make changes to other legislative acts regulating the rights of children. Along with the other rights, according to the amendments made to the Civil Code of Georgia, the law provides for more guarantees in terms of property rights of minors.  In accordance with the changes, “the disposal of the immovable property belonging to the child by his/her parents or legal representatives shall be allowed following the best interests of the child, based on the consent of the Court,” as it is noted in the Article 183 of the Civil Code. 

HRC for many years has been referring to the problem that parents were allowed to dispose of the properties of their children.  Following the existing cases, the organization with a purpose to protect the properties of children applied to the Parliament of Georgia with a legislative proposal.

According to the legislative amendment proposed by HRC, there is a need for restrictive norms against the parents acting against the children’s interests. Furthermore, there is a need for the institutional regulation, in particular, to determine the monitoring mechanism, the authorized person and the procedure, i.e. to determine the authority and the procedure according to which the compliance with the interests of the child of the contract concluded with third parties shall be established. 

Specifically, the proposed formulation was as follows:  It is prohibited to the parent to give out as a present or otherwise dispose of the personal property of his/her minor child, except for the cases when this is caused by an urgent necessity and serves the best interests of the child.   In such cases, a preliminary consent of the guardianship authorities shall be needed. 

It should be noted that at that time, the Committee of Legal Issues considered the legislative proposal submitted by HRC unreasonable and refused to accept the mentioned changes. Consequently, the issue still remained a problem. 

HRC welcomes the new approach of the Parliament of Georgia, based on which the legislative changes were implemented aiming at the protection of the property of children, and sharing the spirit of the legislative changes submitted by HRC in 2017. For more information, you can see the HRC  Press Release about the legislative suggestions from 2017 on the protection of property rights of minors. 

Human Rights Center