MOSCOW, April 02. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s child rights ombudsman has warned parents against participation of their children in child beauty pageants, saying they violated the Civil Code.
“Analyzing the pageants, we have seen that they are not in line with Russia’s legislation,” Pavel Astakhov told reporters at round-table discussions. He said they were in conflict with the Civil Code, the Labor Code and the Law on Consumer Rights.
“We have very tough demands as to a possibility to employ underage children in public events. These can be concerts, theater and musical performances. And the list of the organizations is final, it is not subject to broad interpretation, and nothing is said there either about talent agencies or advertising agencies or about the agencies which are not on this list but in fact perform these functions,” Astakhov said.
He also said that there was no control at child pageants as to whether those who worked with children had the right to do it, whether they had criminal records or other restrictions.
He said child beauty pageants were at the moment inviting a lot of questions from the parents. “There has been a host of such appeals over the past year,” the ombudsman said. With this in view, specialists have undertaken to thoroughly analyze such contests, he said, adding that plans were to further tighten legislation as to participation of children in public events that could harm their bodily or psychic health.
On February 14, a bill was submitted to the State Duma lower house of parliament to ban children from participation in beauty pageants to envisage fines of up to 1 million rubles for violation of the ban.