International Forum Large Family and Future of Humanity. Interview with Sharon Slater, President of the UN Family Rights Caucus

de Stiripentruviata.ro

What was your personal reason behind getting involved in pro-life activity?
I was invited to come to UN to observe. I had never been involved politically, I was a mum with schoolchildren, but for some reason I accepted the invitation and went to Geneva. I was put in a room and told to monitor any positive things about the family. But my paper remained blank, because there was nothing in support of the family and everything against the family. Then finally, one delegate raised her hand and said something good.

She said: ’We need to put something in here about respect for religious and cultural values’. It was like she dropped a bomb in the room. Everyone was silent and then they started arguing, telling her why this was bad, why this was wrong, why it didn’t fit.

Then I started shaking, because I had a booklet in my purse that I had left in the side of the room that had the exact citations she needed from past UN documents, to show that it was consensus language for the UN to phrase what she had said. So I didn’t know what I could do, if I could give it to her, if they would throw me out, but I got my courage and I went and got it. It was very crowded. I made my way behind her and I stuck it on her lap.

She was trying to argue and all of a sudden she looked down and saw the very citations she needed. She read the citations and showed this was in many UN documents, they had already agreed on it, and she won the argument.

Then she pulled me out into the hallway and said: ’ Who are you?’ I was a mum.

But I was a mum who happened to be at the right place, with the right tool to impact international negotiations that affect the world.

That changed my life. I thought that if a mum with no experience could impact international negotiations, what if that mum learned a little bit about it? What if we brought other people, experts, doctors, lawyers, youth, grandmothers to speak on this matter?

We started helping these diplomats who were brave, to have support. That was 15 years ago. And I’ve dedicated my life since that time to organising events and people, to lobbying activities of different NGOs, I’ve founded the UN Family Rights Caucus and we’ve had a lot of great success.

There is a great battle going on all the time at the United Nations over the sexuality for children, life issues, gay and lesbian issues, family, religious values. And the diplomats there need support and need people from different countries to come and lobby their own countries and help us lobby for all the countries.

Our most recent great success was just in June. We helped support diplomats to pass a protection of the family resolution in the Human Rights UN Council. It was fought over, it was a big battle, many countries against the family wanted to redefine it, but we won the battle.

And this resolution calls for a panel on family at the the Human Rights Council that will be this Monday (September 15th, 2014). So we are putting on lots of pro-family events to support this effort and, as a part of that, we have a ‘Declaration on the Rights of Children and their Families’.

This is an exciting project of the UN Family Rights Caucus, a call from the children of the world to the United Nations to protect the right of every child to life, to have a mother and father, the right to innocence and childhood, and to call upon the UN to protect the institution of the family as they are obligated in many human rights instruments.

We invite anybody who reads or is listening to this interview to go to www.unfamilyrightscaucus.org

and click on ‘Current initiatives’. There they will find this declaration and an explanation on how they can sign it online. But it is a wonderful opportunity for them to educate their children on these important principles.

Just as my first story told you about the importance of UN consensus language, language from past UN documents, this declaration is based on UN consensus language that the UN is completely ignoring.

And children need families, they need parents and we want them to understand these principles and to sign the petition to call upon the UN member states to respect these rights.

What are your thoughts and expectations about this forum?
This is a historic event that has brought people from all different continents, from all different countries, and I think, as always when these conferences happen, miracles will happen, people will get connected, they will engage in projects, they’ll feel emboldened.

It is very empowering to hear government leaders, civil society leaders, religious leaders from all around the world who have the same values on family. Everybody will go back home empowered with ideas and projects and a lot of good will happen, I hope, in the family policy arenas in these countries.

What is your message for Romanian families?
To keep the family as the basic unit of society, to not allow the influences that are coming from the developed countries all around you to impose their view of the family.

If I had one warning, it would be that part of this big agenda that we fight is a hidden agenda to sexualise your children. They are trying to establish and international right to comprehensive sexual education. I will be giving a presentation on this programme, funded by the UN that teaches children at the earliest ages that they have the right to sexual pleasure and how to obtain it, and many things that is not even appropriate for me to discuss with adults, and yet they are teaching to children.

So you need to be aware what your children are learning in your schools and any programs they are doing during the day.

This sexuality programmes are the mechanism and the number one goal of the sexual rights activists to change the world and the family.