World Family Policy Center News
7/08/02
Volume 1, Issue 12
The following excerpts are highlights of current events and do not
necessarily represent the views of the World Family Policy Center or Brigham
Young University.
FROM THE WFPC
NEW WORLD FAMILY POLICY CENTER WEBSITE!
The
World Family Policy Center has just launched its new website. The
website is in its beginning phases. Information will be added to it
on a regular basis. Once it is completed, it will be a resource for family
policy research. Check out the website at www.worldfamilypolicy.org
IN THE NEWS
COHABITING IS NOT THE
SAME AS COMMITMENT (Click title to read the full
article)
By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY
Researcher Scott Stanley's case is this: Women living unmarried with
guys and expecting a lasting, committed marriage down the line had better
review their options. His research finds that men who cohabit with the women
they eventually marry are less committed to the union than men who never lived
with their spouses ahead of time.
A variety of such studies will be presented beginning Thursday at the
Washington, D.C., conference sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Family
and Couples Education.
Ironically, the divorce rate among those who once lived together is
higher than among those who have not. Experts say that is often because those
who choose to cohabit are not great believers in marriage in the first place.
Stanley sees other factors at play. In his study on live-ins who
married, less religious men were particularly apt to be less committed. It may
be that higher divorce rates among one-time cohabitors are a result of
"the presence of males who are less dedicated, less religious and more
negative" than males who didn't cohabit, he says.
His study will be published in a future issue of the Journal of
Family Issues.
SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION: The case against the
International Criminal Court.
(Click title to read the full article)
By Pete DuPont, The Wall Street Journal, Editorial
Wednesday, June 26, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
Next Monday
the International Criminal Court officially comes to life. The required 60
nations have ratified it--although the U.S. has not--so in September the member
nations will meet to set rules for selecting judges and its prosecutor.
By January
the ICC may begin prosecuting international crimes if the relevant nation's own
courts are unable or unwilling to do so and a member state or the U.N. Security
Council refers a matter to it, or if the prosecutor decides on his own that
something should be done. The court is authorized to investigate and prosecute
four crimes committed by individuals (not nations) at any time after July 1:
genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and "aggression," which
has yet to be defined.
Another serious issue is the impact the ICC would have on America's constitutional
democracy. The ICC is modeled on the Continental European system of justice,
which, unlike the Anglo-American system, values strong central authority rather
than individual rights. Our Constitution carefully defines the rights of
citizens and limits government, dividing power among the legislative, executive
and judicial branches. But none of these protections will apply in ICC
prosecutions. There is no due process guarantee, no First Amendment, and no
trial by jury.
AT THE UN
URGENT MEASURES NEEDED TO PREVENT 29 MILLION NEW AIDS
INFECTIONS BY 2010
(Click title to read full news brief)
5 July – New United Nations estimates show that
preventive steps aimed at stopping the spread of HIV could save 29 million
people from the AIDS virus by the year 2010.
But the world
body is also warning that a delay in adopting 12 recommended measures will
dramatically cut the number of infections that can be prevented, according to
an article written by a group of experts convened
by the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) to be published in The Lancet medical review tomorrow.
While the number of adults infected each year could be reduced from the current
over 4 million each year to approximately 1.5 million by 2005, a three-year
delay could slash these potential gains in half.
The
12 prevention interventions include mass media campaigns; public sector condom
promotion and distribution; condom social marketing; voluntary counselling and
testing programmes; prevention of mother-to-child transmission; school-based
programmes; programmes for out-of-school youth; workplace programmes; treatment
of sexually transmitted infections; peer counselling for sex workers; outreach
to men who have sex with men; and harm reduction programmes for injecting drug
users.
HEAD OF UN ANTI-AIDS AGENCY URGES POLITICAL COMMITMENT TO
FIGHT EPIDEMIC
(click title to read full news brief)
8 July – The head of the United Nations agency
spearheading the fight against HIV/AIDS has called on the international
community to galvanize political commitment, scale up prevention and treatment
and mobilize $10 billion a year to curb the epidemic.
Dr. Piot
called for stepped up efforts to meet global anti-AIDS targets set at recent
international conferences, including last year's UN General Assembly Special
Session on HIV/AIDS. "The promises have been made," he said. "Now
they must be kept."
A report
recently released by UNAIDS shows that the AIDS epidemic is still in its early
phase, with no sign of levelling off in the hardest hit countries. The Report
on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic 2002 warns that AIDS is erasing decades of
development and cutting life expectancy by nearly half in the most affected
areas.
Today, 40
million people live with HIV/AIDS in the world, according to the UN. Last year,
5 million people were newly infected with HIV, and 3 million died of AIDS.
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