Which is the traditional family? Our definition, not the Vatican's

Speech given by Cesnabmihilo Dorothy Aken’Ova / INCRESE, Minna
19th April 2004

At: WE ARE FAMILY - a Panel of the IRCSM and ISHR.

I have followed the UN processes since 1994 after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). I have participated in lobbying at a significant number of these processes, and at all the sessions “families” or “diverse forms of families” have been raised as language for inclusion in UN agreements, often within the context of human rights and sexual and reproductive rights. In each moment, there have been heated negotiations. In all the instances, language that recognizes multiple or diverse forms of family has been bracketed and often removed from the final agreement.

1. What is the source of the model called “traditional family”?
2. Whose interests are represented?
3. Is this game played out of ignorance or mischief?
4. Why are so many UN member states so afraid to recognize diverse forms of “families”?
5. How do we respond to this?

I shall attempt to answer these questions in the next few minutes.

1. What is the source of the model called “traditional family”?

My first experience of debates surrounding definition of a family was at the University when I was an undergraduate. I went in to see the doctor in the sickbay and before she attended to me, she was concluding a telephone quarrel. She was furiously trying to explain to someone in authority why she would continue to provide treatment to all members of the families of university staff.

I later discovered that the fury was ignited by a university rule, which was enacted to control university health expenditure. It exempted female-headed households and members of the family of female staff of the university from accessing free medical services. Because this woman was in the employment of the university rather than her husband, her family members were not covered.

There were arguments that demonstrated to the university authority that what they were defining as a family was not adequate and left out many forms of families. The discrimination being perpetrated by the University had potentially devastating consequences – limiting access to heath care can have dire consequences.

In my country if we were to talk about traditional family, the profile would not necessarily be of a father (male), a mother (female) and two children. Nigeria has the widest range of families represented in the population. These include:

- Polygamous families (for traditionalists this means a limitless number of wives; Christians families may include 2 wives or sometimes more; and Muslim families may have a maximum of 4 wives)
- Female headed households (through divorce, abandonment, death and choice)
- Extended families
- In certain Nigerian cultures there are female husbands and male wives as captured in a publication (boy wives, girl husbands)
- There are an increasing number of households headed by children as the result of armed conflict and because of deaths due to HIV/AIDS
- Monogamous heterosexual families with no children
- Monogamous heterosexual families with an average of 5.1 children (NDHS 2000)
- Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other families with and without children


2. Whose interests are represented?

But what is this traditional family? Whose traditional family has two children, a husband and a wife? Whose agenda is represented by claiming a unilateral traditional family?

It is certainly NOT a human rights agenda, a community level agenda, nor is it religious. In the 2 leading religions in my country, we see many expressions of diverse forms of families. From the Old Testament, Abraham had a wife and concubines; the widow who fed Elijah; King Solomon the most favoured King in Israel had 700; King David, described often as God’s friend had many wives, some of whom he abducted; Hannah the mother of Samuel was not the only wife of her husband. The Garden of Eden (Adam and Eve and Caine and Abel had evolved!).

In the New Testament, the woman by the well who was met by Jesus was cohabiting with a man after her 5th divorce. We never met the parents of Mary Martha and Lazarus. They lived together as a family. The first time we meet Simon Peter in his house when Jesus goes to heal his mother, we see an extended family: Peter’s wife, his mother, and children etc.

In Islam, the teaching of prophet Mohammed begins by encouraging men to take additional wives from among the widows and orphans who were economically deprived following the death of their husbands during the Jihad, he states that all the wives must be treated equally. Yet, the Prophet recognizes the difficulty, perhaps even the impossibility of such equal treatment. Given this near impossibility, the Prophet concludes justice likely requires that a man should only have one wife.

And what of human rights? Adherence to the basic human rights principles of equality and freedom from discrimination requires that all families be treated equally, and that all rights should be promoted and protected for all members of all families.


3. Is this game – denying the existence of multiple forms of families – being played out of ignorance or mischief?

“The family” agenda must belong to a new order, a new power seeking to control other people’s sexuality and fertility. It is the agenda of the Unholy Alliance between different forms of fundamentalisms – religious, cultural, political and economic. Is there not sufficient proof for all that this new world order is a failure?

Unfortunately, countries that ought to know and do better at the UN align themselves to this unholy alliance. The insidious impact of this alliance is pervasive because it doesn’t mind courting with OIC despite the verse that instructs, “be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers…”

4. Why are the UN members afraid of real “families”?

But what do human rights mean? They articulate principles that are found in most religions - the value of respect for all of humanity in all our diversity – the real families of real people, not the fictions that claim that there can be only one profile of a real family. We often can’t help but ask ourselves if those countries that tow these lines, like mine, are blind.

But they are not. Rather, they are themselves compromised because they do not adhere to clearly articulated principles and ideologies of equality and justice that they claim to support. They negotiate in opposition to the realities in their countries, in opposition to the real needs of their populations, and the protection of their human rights. The results are often quite telling - for instance, during the Children’s Summit, the Minister from Nigeria who spoke against language recognizing diverse forms of “families” heads a single parent household. Her own situation does not conform to the model “family” projected to us constantly at the UN. They are not doing this out of ignorance. It is mischief, selfishness and hypocrisy.

5. How do we best respond to this?

How do we respond to this challenge?

We need to find means of holding our countries accountable to the principles to which they have agreed to abide, especially when they do not represent us correctly. We should engage in legal and political advocacy.

At the country level, we need to create political awareness in our communities about the significance of UN processes. We can talk about who and how we are represented by our government officials and make a link between the quality of life of individuals and communities, and the policies articulated at the UN. We also need to help communities recognise how much power they have as an electorate in countries that are democratic. If their votes matter, they will be better represented.

And what of the UN family? We need to find a way of bridging the polarised setting of the UN today, where regional allegiances have stronger influence during negotiations than human rights principles, country constitutions, laws and policies. This is the case with Nigeria when it votes against comprehensive sexuality education but has a national comprehensive sexuality education curriculum.

Finally, we must continue advocacy and lobbying at the UN. If we understand that a human rights agenda is a broad one, and one that includes the rights of all members of all families, we can also make stronger alliances with other groups doing advocacy. This will help all of us to see that our issues and their concerns are part of a larger struggle for justice, and articulate these linkages wherever and whenever possible.

Thank you.