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The Future of Our Children
The United Nations Special Session of the General Assembly on Children
By Mona Younus
24/08/2001
Any visitor of IslamOnline, and of their social page in particular, is going to be amazed by the tremendous and vast quantity of articles written describing the social changes our families have faced in the last two decades. There is what we once called the "sexual revolution" which can be traced and obviously noticed on TV and the Internet, not to mention on the pages of magazines. The actual problem is not so much when and why this happened, but how the Muslims in general and their governments in particular confront such a phenomena.
Governments have found themselves confronted with an unexpected range of social and marital problems that had been the major motivation behind a long sequence of changes within the personal status law system.
For a complete vision of the changes that effected our social relations we must inevitably point to some other phenomena, particularly the plight of our children.
Where is the innocence of children? Did childhood itself vanish?
Throughout the humanitarian map, one sees the destruction and brutality that have robbed the global community's children of the right to be protected from the barbaric circumstances that have warped the social fibers of their lives.
All over the world children go hungry, are homeless, and are bought and sold because their families are either dead or cannot afford to support them. In Iraq they are too weak to scream for mercy and in Palestine they are shot to death before they can even voice their opposition. In almost in all other countries of the Muslim world they have to work like slaves in order to have food to eat.
Whereas in other parts of the world, children sit idly in front of the television, bombarded with commercials for alcohol, cigarettes and condoms.
Children throughout the world have been robbed and the global community must now take steps towards improving the universal plight and future of those children.
No doubt, reasons and changes for the new, and sometimes continuous, plight of children across the world vary, despite their correlations and interconnectedness. The analysis of every single reason would need in depth study. However, in this article we will tackle one specific dimension that has led, in some way, to the changes we view in our social and personal life: it is the international impact…to be more precise, the impact of the international conferences that are organized by the United Nations. Bearing in mind that the international dimension is just one of the many impacts that played a role in the changing social structure of our world.
So let us shed some light on the international U.N. conferences that are concerned with social issues. From September 19-21, the "U.N. Child Summit" will take place in New York. It considered by the U.N. administration to be a continuation of the 1990 "International Child Summit," which was held months after the
Convention on the Rights of the Child was issued.
The upcoming U.N. Child Summit is nothing but a renewed obligation and promise - by the different countries - to do their best to apply what has been "agreed and ratified upon" at the prior summit, regardless of whether the agreed upon and ratified points contradict with the cultural practices and religious specifications of members of the global society.
Ignoring cultural and religious relativism was the major reason behind the Islamic, Arabic and even Christian opposition to the Conference of Population and Development (CDP) that was held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. The summit included articles and laws that focused on sexual rights, freedom of sexual orientation rights - e.g. homosexuality, and sexual reproductive health education - which means the free right to abortion.
The CDP adopted vague, undefined and loose terms that left too much up to interpretation. One of those vague terms and expressions is "reproductive health services," which includes within it the right of safe abortion but makes the initial issue of having an abortion something too irrelevant to discuss. Another very provocative issue is the issue of "sexual orientation rights" which carries the rights of homosexuality to a totally new standard, making it a basic human right.
The Child Summit is nothing more than a new link in a long chain of conferences in which different pressure groups play very effective roles in monitoring the way the final declaration is issued. One of these very powerful pressure lobbies are the pro-choice abortion groups, if anyone still doubts the effectiveness and strength of these groups he/she can revisit the results of the Clinton election in 1992 and 1996 to get an idea of just how much they contributed to the final results of those campaigns.
But, it is not only the pro-choice lobby that had such an effect in formulating the final declaration. In addition, the gay/lesbian coalition that was so "successful" that it even attracted Catholics and some "Muslims" to their side. There has even been a rise in "Muslim gay/lesbian organizations" (e.g.
Alfatiha).
How could all those different trends affect and have such impact on the U.N.? The answer is not an enigma. The absence of the Islamic trend in these conferences and the total "ignorance" of the Muslim people, and the Muslim elite class, of what is going on within the U.N. building has been the major defect in the inability to form any sort of counterbalance. However the picture is not so pessimistic. Due to the fact that the participation of different NGO's had made it possible for different groups to gradually acquire an idea of what is going on, is at last allowing them to become more active and effective.
To be honest, one however must say that this seems like too little too late. Efforts put into that field are still low relative to expectations, as there are still many different techniques that still have to effectively be put into action. One of these techniques is the "strategy of lobbying" and the idea of forming strong coalitions. Another is the way by which to deal with prewritten documents issued by the U.N., which give NGO's so little room to act.
We must put a stop to any documents that so blatantly ignore issues of cultural and religious relativism, especially when the future of our children is the booty at stake.
We as a Muslim community, working via legitimate NGOs, should assert our right to be heard within the walls of the U.N. We must object to issues that tear away at the fabric of our beliefs yet support stances that truly seek to quell injustices being practiced both within the Arab/Muslim community and throughout the global community as a whole.
The U.N. Special Session of the General Assembly on Children must focus on such universal issues as living conditions, healthcare and services, education, and basic sustenance and human rights issues while keeping in mind the specific and differing needs and circumstances of the countries involved.
In addition to the above agenda items of the Special Assembly summit, we must also address the plight of children in special circumstances. Palestinian, Iraqi, Kashmiri, Chechen and other children embroiled in an environment of war must be taken into account as emergency situations. They must be granted the basic right to live and we as Muslims are responsible for ensuring that the international community takes on that responsibility. And the U.N., being the governing body of the international community, must put aside the demands of the special interest groups and truly focus on the demands of the world's children, especially since many of them do not have the right nor the freedom to speak out for themselves.
With contributions by Neveen Salem
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