After President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address in January 1994, the media were boundless in their reporting of the president’s freshened support among the American electorate. The clue to the country’s enthusiastic response was the president’s apparent support of “family values.” In the disparate language of the State of the Union address, however, the people were misled. When Clinton voiced the word “family,” the people envisioned their own families — fathers and mothers, children and cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents. They were cheered by an apparently renewed presidential support for their yearnings and fundamental values. But the use of the word “family” was in fact a political ‘magician’s trick’: for Clinton the word “family” has an entirely different meaning. Unknown to the majority of Americans, a struggle, led at the international level by the Clinton Administration, has ensued for a radical, all-inclusive redefinition of the family. The substance of that redefinition can be traced in the defining language of the United Nations’ International Year of the Family (IYF).
The International Year of the Family
The United Nations’ Commission for Social Development has been designated as the “preparatory body” and the Economic and Social Council as the “coordinating body” for the International Year of the Family (IYF) 1994. The theme of the IYF is “Family: resources and responsibilities in a changing world.” The IYF slogan redefines the hierarchically ordered family as a “democracy” thereby reducing family authority to an individualistic order of “one man, one vote.” In that slogan the U.N. pronounces its intention, “Building the smallest democracy at the heart of society.”
The insignia of the IYF is “a heart sheltered by a roof, linked by another heart,” symbolizing “life and love.” The open design of the insignia is intended to symbolize “continuity with a hint of uncertainty.” The symbolism of an open line roof is used to represent the “complexity of the family” rather than its unity. The home is designated as a place where “‘one finds warmth, caring, security, togetherness, tolerance and acceptance.” Within this milieu, authority is diffused and held captive to the state. Individual family members are stripped of the mediating influence of family relationships and stand naked before state powers.
IYF principles
The underlying principles of the IYF, formulated by U.N. agencies, direct attention to the newly-defined family as “the basic unit of the society.” The agencies then propose to facilitate the families’ assumption of “responsibilities within the community.” Responsibilities, to be exercised by the family under U.N. jurisdiction, have been formulated in previous documents. These include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights, the Declaration on Social Progress and Development; and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Under the principles established by these documents, families are to be understood as assuming “diverse forms and functions” within various societies. This “diversity” precludes identifying universal principles which adhere to the definition of the family. The family therefore is founded on “individual preferences and societal conditions.” The IYF will address family “needs” in accord with this multiplicity.
“Human rights and fundamental freedoms,” discerned in terms of grants extended by governments “under the aegis of the United Nations,” will be promoted within the family structure “whatever the status of each individual within the family, and whatever form and condition of that family.”
Policies will be established which aim at “equality between men and women within families” in order to bring about government-established divisions of labor which relate to “a fuller sharing of domestic responsibility and employment opportunities.”
IYF objectives
IYF objectives include the stimulation of action at all levels — local, national and international — in order to incorporate the family redefinition at all policy levels. This effort is intended to “increase awareness” of family “needs,” based on the new definition, among “governments as well as the private sector.” Policies are to be developed in light of families’ “economic, social and demographic processes” while focusing on the “rights and responsibilities of all family members.”
National institutions within the various nations are to be directed to “formulate, implement and monitor policies” based on the U.N. family model. At the same time, collaboration among “national and international nongovernmental organizations” to support related “multi-sectoral activities” will be encouraged. IYF will build “upon the results of international activities” which focus on “women, children, youth, the aged [and] the disabled.”
The individually and societally-established “strengths of families” are to be promoted by the IYF program but “they should give expression to an integrated perspective of families, their members, community and society.”
“Measures” will be established by the United Nations to “ensure appropriate evaluation of progress made” and “obstacles encountered” in order to guarantee “success and adequate follow-up” in the “continuing process” of IYF (1994 International Year of the Family, published by the United Nations).
