The Legal Issues Committee reviewed and supported the constitutional draft laws on Amendments to the Constitution of Georgia and on Family Values and the Protection of Minors during the first reading.

According to the amendments, the following paragraph 3 will be added to Article 30 of the Constitution of Georgia: “The protection of family values and minors is ensured by the constitutional law of Georgia, which is an integral part of the Constitution of Georgia”.

“We decide to elevate the issues of family values and the protection of minors to the level of constitutional values, which is the purpose of developing this constitutional draft law”, – Rati Ionatamishvili, one of the initiators of the draft law and Chairman of the Human Rights and Civil Integration Committee, stated.

According to him, the constitutional draft law addresses various issues related to marriage, adoption and foster care of minors, medical interventions for sex change, indication of gender in official documents, the use of concepts defined by sexual characteristics, assembly, and dissemination of information.

“This constitutional draft law aims to strengthen the mechanisms for protecting family values based on the union of a man and a woman, and the best interests of minors”, – Rati Ionatamishvili noted.

He mentioned that after the public discussions on the constitutional amendments, there is political and civil consensus on the protection of family values and minors.

“I emphasize consensus because it reflects not only the positions of Georgian Dream voters. In fact, it represents the interests of voters from all political platforms to have these initiatives adopted and approved by Parliament”, – the presenter noted.

According to Anri Okhanashvili, Chairman of the Legal Issues Committee, the overwhelming majority of participants in the meetings held within the framework of the public discussions on the constitutional amendments positively assessed these constitutional draft laws, indicating that the further discussion of these projects has high legitimacy from the public.

The draft bills were initiated by 83 MPs from the parliamentary majority.