The family is under attack, or so Family Watch International would have you believe. The organisation rallied support for a Human Rights Council resolution passed today on the “protection of the family: role of the family in supporting the protection and promotion of human rights of older persons”.
The Child Rights International Network (CRIN) thinks there certainly are human rights issues affecting older people and many of those take place within the family. Older people are often in need of care and support and many choose to remain with their families rather than live in institutions, making it important that their rights to health, privacy and dignity are respected in that setting. The Human Rights Council should certainly be addressing this issue, but the resolution has critical blind spots.
CRIN: “The resolution is the latest attempt to restrictively define what a family is, excluding children who live within families that do not fit the stereotype of married heterosexual parents with children. Children have the same rights, regardless of who their parents are or how they choose to live and the attempt to protect a traditional concept of “the family” can only discriminate against children who find their family does not fit this norm. The hostility to the term “various forms of the family”, which is at the heart of the negotiation, is a hostility to the rights of children who find themselves born to less traditional forms of family.”
Read the full publication on www.crin.org.