Tunis: Various civil society organisations on Friday decried in a joint press release, the content of the booklet that had been withdrawn from the United Nations stand at the Tunis International Book Fair (FILT) and the handling of this issue by the fair's management, pointing out that this booklet is liable to "undermine the most essential values of the society, the family structure and the laws of the Tunisian Republic." These NGOs denounced "the interference of certain United Nations representations in Tunisia in social relations, in defiance of diplomatic customs and their obligations to respect the specific characteristics of each country," claiming that the image of the family conveyed in this booklet is far from being a reproduction of reality and aims to compromise family stability and cohesion." FILT Director Mohamed Saleh El kadri told a news briefing on Thursday that the management had decided to withdraw the booklet from the United Nations stand. "The booklets are in Tunisian dialect and contai n questions put by children to their parents about sex education," he said. The organisers of the UN stand had been called upon to withdraw the booklet after checking its content, which raises questions about homosexuality and relationships between people of the same sex, the official pointed out, adding that the information do not comply with the specific characteristics of the Tunisian society, which remains attached to its authenticity and identity, while at the same time being open to universal values. The Tunisian Association for Education Quality, the Tunisian Association of Parents and Students, the Coordination of Angry Parents, the Association "Our Pupils" and the National Organisation for Education and the Family expressed astonishment at the excesses noticed in publications at the International Book Fair and the "irresponsible" statements made by its director to the media. For its part, the International Organisation for the Protection of Children in the Mediterranean (French: OIPEM) expressed r ejection of the exploitation of children and teenagers for the purposes of implementing 'dubious programmes' which might undermined the society and its heritage and religious referential, underlining the right of children to all forms of knowledge and learning. Sex education must be included in school curricula and within the family in order to protect children, the OIPEM considered. Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse