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FROM THE
INTERNATIONAL LAW, SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE FAMILY
(click title to read the full article)
by
Prof. Richard Wilkins, Managing Director,
Paper presented at the 2002 World Family Policy Forum
The nations of the world must carefully consider the natural family and children's rights language they incorporate into international declarations. Language may be merely a recommendation today. But that same language may be binding tomorrow. The world community, in negotiating documents that affect the world's social ecology, must be certain that the phrases it uses, the rules it creates, and the lessons that it teaches uplift rather than degrade the world's most important resource: the world's families and their children.
IN THE NEWS
SENATE COMMITTEE VOTES FOR U.N. GENDER TREATY
(click title to read the
full article)
Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com
The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee voted...for ratification of a controversial United Nations
treaty opposed by a number of conservative women's groups. Sen. Joseph Biden,
D-Del., chairman of the committee, said CEDAW "can be viewed as an
international bill of rights.
But Sen.
Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the ranking minority member of the committee, says the
treaty is a wolf in sheep's clothing. "Unfortunately, some are confusing
the very clear moral imperative to secure basic freedoms and liberties for
women with pretense that a need exists to ratify the United Nations Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),"
Helms wrote in a letter to Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Monday.
"The documented
radical agenda of the committee established by CEDAW is undisputed. [Among
other things, that committee has directed
Related
Articles
International Treaty for Women Faces Uphill U.S. Battle, Some Fear it Will Boost Feminist Agenda
(click title to read the full article.)
by James Dao, New York Times
also available at www.nytimes.com with subscription
SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION, READY FOR PRIME-TIME?
(click title to read the full article.)
By Leonard Sax, M.D., The World and I
Today's important quarrel in public
education is the debate over single-sex education. With politicians, school
administrators, activists, scientific researchers, teachers, and parents weighing
in on the subject, the battle will only get bigger. One reason is that the
basic premise underlying Title IX-that there is no
educationally meaningful, biologically determined differences between
the sexes-now looks awfully outdated.
In
April 2001, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled Does Sex
Matter? The Academy announced that sex does matter, that there are immutable
biological differences between the sexes which go far beyond the genitals.
"There are multiple, ubiquitous differences in the basic cellular
biochemistries of males and females," according to the report, and
"these differences do not necessarily arise as a result of differences in
the hormonal regime to which males and females are exposed, but are a direct
result of the genetic differences between the two sexes." One chapter is
devoted to analysis of sex differences in psychology and behavior,
differences that the report concludes are grounded first and foremost in
"basic genetic and physiological differences" and are only partly
amenable to environmental influences. The basic premise underlying Title
IX--that there are no educationally meaningful, biologically determined
differences between the sexes--turns out to be false.
(click title to read the full article)
By Nina Bernstein, The New York Times
When studies last year
showed that the share of the nation's children living in single-parent
households had declined in the late 1990's, many welcomed the results as signs
that the 1996 welfare overhaul was working.
But new research underscores a smaller,
unwelcome trend: a rising share of children, particularly black children in
cities, are turning up in no-parent households, left with relatives, friends or
foster families without either their mother or their father.
"What we're seeing is the complex relationship between this thing we call welfare reform and the impact on families," said Wade F. Horn, the Bush administration official who oversees the welfare program. "In some cases we see positive effects on family structures, and in other cases we see more children living in no-parent families."
AT THE UN
ANNAN INTRODUCES NEW U.N. HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
(click title to read the full news brief)
UN News Centre
29 July – Sergio Vieira de Mello, the next United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, today pledged to turn the issue of human rights into a source of unity and to convince governments of the importance of protecting civil liberties.
(click title to read the full news brief)
UN Wire
5 Aug. - The United
States and
Upcoming Conference: World
26 August-4 September
www.johannesburgsummit.org/flat/
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