Experts tell UN Human Rights Council to Include the Family in New Development Goals

By Wendy Wright | 2014

GENEVA, September 19 (C-Fam) Countries must look at factors that destroy families, a legal expert told the Human Rights Council on Monday. The plea to the rights council came as their delegates in at UN headquarters are deciding how billions of aid dollars will be spent on new global development goals in the coming years.

“It is not sufficient for family members to protect themselves,” legal expert Aslan Abashidze told the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The professor sits on a UN treaty committee and spoke on a panel convened by the Council on protecting the rights of the family.

The family is an “essential contributor to development,” and “worthy” to be prioritized for investment and partnerships, Dr. Zitha Mokomane, a South African researcher, told the Council. Yet “the family was ignored” in the Millennium Development Goals and the current draft of the new goals.

In the past, several governments referred to families as “takers” rather than contributors to society.

Focusing on family, rather than solely on individuals, will help achieve goals on reducing poverty, deaths of mothers and children, and other goals to improve lives, Mokomane said.

A family provides holistic care in ways that governments or aid groups cannot. During war or crisis, efforts to help can “re-victimize” people when they don’t consider the family as a whole, warned an expert with Caritas of Colombia. “If families remain united, they can recover faster” and do not become dependent on aid, said Floriano Carrera.

Developed nations also suffer from family breakdown. But efforts to tackle problems get hijacked into divisive political battles, such as insisting marriage definitions include same-sex partners. One group from the University of Wisconsin held Family Impact Seminars for U.S. policy-makers to find ways to empower families and avoid controversial political issues. Evaluate policies through the lens of how it will impact families, such as preparing youth to be successful in work, advised Professor Karen Bogenschneider,

The lone UN staffer on the panel had no kind words for the family. The concept of families must change with evolving social norms, said Jane Connor with the UN human rights office, using a veiled reference to same-sex couples. Women experience discrimination in families due to stereotypes and are denied equal rights. Violence against women, children, and the disabled is accepted and unpunished, she stated.

The moderator promptly responded to the bureaucrat. “This panel is not about defining the family,” said Ambassador Yvette Stevens of Sierre Leone. “In each state it is different. It is up to each country to decide.”

Several governments took issue with holding the discussion at all.

“The primary responsibility of the state is to protect individuals,” and victims of abuse in families, stated Slovenia, Austria and Croatia. Another group of countries argued for a “broad understanding of what is a family.”

Abashidze shot back at attempts to denigrate families. It was up to governments to prosecute violence. If a government broadens the definition, then its responsibilities also broaden, he noted.

Sharon Slater flew to Geneva to organize extra events around the panel. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states the family is entitled to protection, yet “never has the family been promoted in an official way with all UN member states gathering to affirm the centrality of family and the obligations of states to protect it,” the head of Family Watch International told the Friday Fax.

“This is a great first step,” she said.

 

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