Speech for Smart Girl Summit 2009

Speech for Smart Girl Summit 2009
Jennifer Stinson
September 18, 2009

Good morning to all the smart girls and smart guys out there. I am so happy to be able to meet with you this morning at the first ever Smart Girl Summit. What a wonderful opportunity for all of us to learn and share our passion for getting involved in the things that matter to us.

I know that my bio was read a minute ago detailing a few things about my life, but what really qualifies me to stand before you this morning and speak? I am a soccer & baseball mom with three kids and a fairly hectic schedule. I juggle the challenges of trying to get the kids to complete homework, practice their music, earn their scout badges, etc. I am constantly trying to find the balance between the needs of my family, and all that I have going on with my projects and work. I even try to sneak in a little Facebook time to keep up with family and friends. I probably share some of these same challenges with many of you. We are not so different.

We also share another very important characteristic. We refuse to sit back and let the world go by, with others making important decisions that affect us and our families. We will not simply watch as laws and policies, rules and regulations are put in place that we do not agree with. No, we will not sit back, we will get involved, we will be active, we will make a difference for the good! I truly believe in the words of anthropologist and humanitarian Margaret Mead when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of dedicated individuals can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I know you share these same ideals because you are HERE, ready and willing to learn and to get involved.

I want to share with you this morning some information about the group I am representing as an example of how we can be involved and active in our communities, our nation, and even the world. I am here today representing United Families International. United Families was started in 1978 by a group of individuals that recognized the need to protect the family as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.” United Families is a nondenominational, non-profit organization devoted to maintaining and strengthening the family as the fundamental until of society at the local, national and international levels. UFI seeks to (1) educate government, community and religious leaders, and citizens at the grass roots level on issues affecting the family and (2) to promote public policies and programs that preserve the traditional family.

We believe that by strengthening the family, the basic building block of society, communities, states and nations are strengthened. We are not affiliated with any government, religion or political party, and we welcome people everywhere who support the following:

Family:  respect for existing law, political structure, religion and cultural norms that preserve the family.
    

Marriage:  respect for marriage between a man and a women founded on chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage.
    

Life:  respect for the sanctity of human life including unborn children.
    

Parents:  respect for the right and obligation of parent to love, protect, provide for and teach their children.  And,
    

Sovereignty:  respect for the sovereign rights of each individual nation as we work in the world community to protect the common good of individual families.


United Families has always been committed to sharing our message through wonderful educational materials, and also through activism. We rely on social science research to produce valuable issues guides that inform and educate the public about important family issues. (Show issues guides) The issues guides are available in booklet form, on CD and also on the internet through our website. These guides are not filled with wild opinions – they are filled with social science data, charts, graphs, statistics – information to back up the positions UFI takes on the issues in question.  One of the most important resources UFI produces is called the UN Negotiating Guide and I will talk more about this in just a few minutes. UFI also produces electronic newsletters , daily briefs and weekly alerts about current issues, and we host a radio talk show called Voice of the Nation. United Families maintains a website and blog, and also Facebook and Twitter accounts. Information and education are critically important to United Families because becoming educated is really the first step toward meaningful activism.

United Families has 2 levels of organization – one level is focused on the activities that take place on a national and state level.  It is mainly comprised of individual state chapters that organize volunteers on a grass roots level, educating them and helping them become involved. There are many state chapters across the nation and we are planning to have a chapter in every state soon. These state chapters are active in the local and state arenas. They monitor city councils, school boards, and state governments, ready to help protect the family whenever possible. We are also organizing a “national chapter” that will be responsible for monitoring and dealing with domestic policy. We readily support and work with other organizations that share similar values and goals. That is why we support Smart Girl Politics and this great Summit!

The other level of organization at United Families is in the international arena. For years, United Families has been active at the United Nations and has worked in cooperation with foreign governments, international organizations and individuals to promote and protect the family across the globe. We have been an important part of the pro-family coalition that has fought the liberal agenda being promoted and adopted at the United Nations. This is where UFI is unique and stands apart from many of the other wonderful family values organizations across the country. I’d like to share with you more information about this aspect of our work and why it is important and relevant to each and every person in attendance today.

Following the end of WWII, representatives of 50 countries met and drew up the United Nations Charter. On 24 October 1945 the United Nations officially came into existence, when the Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a majority of other signatories. The goals of the United Nations are:  facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace. There are currently 192 member states, including nearly every sovereign nation in the world.

As outlined in its Charter, the UN is divided into administrative bodies, such as the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council. It also has other UN System agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The United Nations does important and wonderful things around the world and helps many, many people. But the UN is not perfect and unfortunately some of the policies that are promoted there are detrimental to families. We cannot give them a “free pass” simply because they do some good things.

The UN and its agencies hold regular meetings throughout the year in various offices around the world. In these meetings issues are decided and often “outcome documents” are produced. Outcome documents can be “hard law” such as treaties or conventions, or “soft law” such as declarations, agreements and protocols. “Hard law” means that the documents are recognized as binding law on member states that sign and ratify them, and can supersede that state’s own domestic laws and constitution. “Soft law” is language that can become law over time through the process of statement and restatement to create precedent.

The UN meetings, or conferences, held throughout the year are known as the Conference Cycle and the results of these meetings are reported to and adopted by the UN General Assembly. Once the “outcome documents” are adopted, they act as “precedent” and are relied upon in the future by not only the UN delegates, but also by governments of member states around the world. The “outcome documents” of the Conference Cycle are creating a new body of international law that we must recognize and pay attention to.

It is important to note here, that UN negotiations are rarely a democratic process. Instead, delegates negotiate over language until "consensus" is reached, or, until there is no more disagreement expressed. This is a process that can give greater power to a small, but very vocal group of negotiators.

UFI maintains non-governmental organization (NGO) status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and works to educate UN ambassadors and delegates on policies affecting the family. Basically, as delegates from around the world meet to negotiate “outcome documents,” we try to identify those that are sympathetic to our cause and work with them, offering support in any way we can. We send representatives to provide legal analysis, scholarly research and sometimes even snacks & coffee to help them through the long negotiation sessions. It is often the case that these pro-family delegates are not equipped to take on the liberal NGO’s and the other delegates pushing a very anti-family agenda. They simply don’t have the staff or the resources to find “consensus language” that supports what they want to see in the document. This is where United Families has provided an invaluable resource to help our pro-family delegates. This is the UN Negotiating Guide. It is a reference book that delegates can use to quickly find “consensus language” that supports the family, marriage, life, religion, national sovereignty and parental rights. We have been successful in affecting the outcome of numerous UN conference documents by working effectively with our coalition members and the pro-family delegates.

Throughout the 1990’s the United Nations assumed a new role as “international lawmaker”, creating many laws that were hostile to the traditional family. A conference in June 1996 called Habitat II was the last of five conferences designed to develop a “blueprint for international laws for the coming century.”  The intent was for the “outcome document” to set a precedent that would directly affect the laws made in countries around the world. The 25,000 participants of the conference consisted of government officials and NGO’s alike. In the previous four conferences, the NGO’s were predominately opposed to traditional family values; the most powerful being the Women’s Caucus, a US feminist organization headed by Bella Abzug.  Their success in the previous four conferences had created language in the international documents that supported same-sex “marriage” and abortion on demand among other things. The purpose of this final conference, was to draft this offensive language into an official document, making it international law.

Recognizing the immense importance of this Habitat II conference, UFI gathered a strong group of representatives to attend, one of which was Richard Wilkins. He attended Habitat II in Istanbul, Turkey and it is an experience he will never forget.

Through a case of mistaken identity he was invited to give an address on the second day of the event in the largest conference room available with a full cadre of translators. He spoke about the importance of the family in society and that great care had to be taken in crafting conference documents because of their significant impact on domestic policy. A few days later, as a result of an unusual series of events, he was selected to give a short four-minute speech before one of the drafting committees at the Habitat Conference. The speakers who took the podium before him urged the conferees to recognize same-sex partnerships, increase funding for adolescent sexual reproductive services, provide 18 to 20 hours a day of government-sponsored daycare, and take all "necessary steps" to insure that every woman was "fully employed" outside the home. Marriage and family, if noted at all by these speakers, were referenced primarily as institutions that reinforce odious cultural stereotypes and that subjugate and demean women. Richard’s message was rather different.

Mr. Wilkens began his remarks by informing those in attendance that the family - as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other important UN documents - is the fundamental unit of society. It is the fundamental unit, moreover, precisely because it is the laboratory where children learn to love, respect and work with each other. He reminded the delegates that, if we don't learn these skills within the home, there is little chance that we will learn them elsewhere. Accordingly, he urged the delegates to do what they could to strengthen the family, rather than expend the vast majority of their energies creating substitute social structures.

The reaction to his speech was remarkable. Many of the speakers who had preceded him at the podium hissed as he returned to his seat and someone even tried to spit on him. But most of the delegates in the audience gave him a standing ovation. Indeed, after the speech, he was approached by one ambassador who embraced him warmly. "Where have you been?" he asked. Next, the ambassador asked a very important question: "What can we do?"

At this point some of the delegates declared that they would not sign the Habitat outcome document until important changes were made. As a result, the outcome document was changed and the severe anti-family language was taken out. Mr Wilkins’ experience is a stellar example of what even ONE person can do when a willingness to be involved puts that person at the right place at the right time!

The Habitat II Conference was a turning point for pro-family voices around the world. Out of that conference came a determination from many organizations to form a strong coalition and challenge the liberal agenda that was sweeping through the United Nations. Over a period of decades and unfortunately without much notice, the UN had come under the powerful influence of extreme feminist and liberal organizations that were determined to use this world governing body to further their agendas. They have been very effective over the years and through their efforts have put the traditional family in peril.

This past March I attended a UN Conference called the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York. CSW is a yearly conference dedicated to ensuring women’s equality and to promoting women’s rights. Its mandate is to “prepare recommendations and reports to the Economic and Social Council on promoting women’s rights in political, economic, civil, social and educational fields.” I attended CSW with several other UFI representatives and we worked together with a coalition of other pro-family organizations from around the world. We gathered each morning with other coalition members in the basement of the UN building to read about meetings that would be happening that day, and to make our plans for supporting the pro-family delegates.  We had been given a preliminary copy of the outcome document for this conference and we were helping the delegates identify anti-family language and then make suggestions for more family-friendly consensus language. As the days wore on the delegates would negotiate for this term, or that term, trying to come to agreement. We were there in the halls and in the lobby, waiting with our books, our computers, our printers, just hoping and praying that our delegates would hold strong to withstand the inevitable attacks from the more liberal nations. On several occasions near the very end of the conference the negotiations went into the wee hours of the morning. It was truly amazing to talk to some of the delegates about what was happening in the conference room and the pressure they were receiving to accept anti-family, pro-abortion language. I spoke with one delegate around 3 am one morning and he was exhausted, battle-worn and quite frustrated – but he was also determined. He was determined not to give in. He was determined to keep language out of the document that would dramatically increase the availability of abortions throughout the world.

During the last night of CSW the negotiations went through the entire night. No consensus could be reached because there were a few pro-family delegates that would simply not accept some of the language being proposed. Around 7am the delegates had a short break and then returned to try to reach consensus on their outcome document. When the delegates reconvened, it was announced that the Vice Chairman, Mr. Ara Margarian from Armenia, had come up with 40 paragraphs of consensus language on his own. These forty paragraphs were areas where consensus among the delegates could not be found.

The final document was then dispersed as delegates were told they had 2 minutes to read the language and either agree or dissent. An outspoken delegate from a small middle-eastern nation refused to agree to the "package deal".

Another small middle-eastern nation voiced its concern with the process and said, "I am one person and other countries have many delegates.  I need more than 2 minutes to review the document." 

 First two or three delegates approached him, and then several more joined the circle. Before long, over 30 delegates encircled the man who dared to reject the "package deal". It was a sight to see. Pressure built further as delegates began to stand, one by one, to announce that they would be flexible and even though they did not get everything they wanted in the outcome document, they were still willing to accept it. Nations urged the dissenter to just agree also. But he would not give in. 


Eventually, Mr. Margarian found the resolution...everyone agreed and consensus was reached. The lone delegate who had taken on the entire body of CSW nations stood and calmly spoke in broken English, "Our concern was not taken up...now it has. We agree."
 In the end, we were able to help the delegates remove six references to "reproductive health services" (abortion) and insert six references to "family.”

As you are sitting here listening to me talk about the United Nations, you may find yourself wondering, “So what? Why does the United Nations matter to me?” Well, I will explain.

Basically, international law is now affecting the laws and policies of the United States more than ever before. The most blatant attempt to impose international law upon the citizens of the United States is through UN treaties or conventions (it means the same thing). Treaties are a form of “hard law” which means that when a country signs and then ratifies the treaty, it is binding law and can even supersede that country’s constitution. I want to discuss for a minute two treaties that have been signed by U.S. Presidents and have been sitting in the Senate for around 20 years, waiting for ratification. These two treaties are the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). If these treaties are ratified by our Senate they will be binding law and would preempt our Constitution, our national laws and our state laws.

The CEDAW treaty is really an international version of the Equal Rights Amendment, but it goes further in its language that discounts marriage, motherhood, families and the unborn. CEDAW was the result of a very effective strategy by those feminists defeated in the Equal Rights battles. When they could not pass the laws they desired in the United States, they took their agenda to the United Nations and have successfully influenced the CEDAW working groups and the CEDAW Committee. This Committee plays an extremely powerful role through oversight and implementation of treaty provisions and the trends that we have seen are alarming. We have documented the CEDAW Committee wielding its great political, as well as financial, power to direct governments to change laws to allow abortion, legalize prostitution, and disallow religious influence in government decision-making. In fact, 37 pro-life governments have been instructed by the Committee to change their laws on abortion. This is why the UN is relevant to us. This is why we need to pay attention to what is happening. President Obama has indicated that he will try to get CEDAW ratified in the Senate and then we will also be subject to the provisions in the CEDAW document itself, as well as the judgments of the CEDAW Committee.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child has equally dangerous implications for us and our families. While outwardly masquerading as a document promoting human rights for children, the CRC actually circumvents parental rights by imbuing governments with the ultimate authority to determine "the best interests of the child." If ratified, this treaty would override virtually all American laws affecting children and families. A committee of 18 experts from other nations sitting in Geneva would have the authority to issue official interpretations of the treaty that are entitled to binding weight in American courts and legislatures. Make no mistake, this reality is at our doorstep. This Administration and some current U.S. legislators have indicated their desire to see these treaties ratified soon.

The treaties are an obvious form of intrusion on our national sovereignty, but there are more subtle intrusions happening all around us through international “soft law.”

For example, in a recent landmark case that established a constitutional right to consensual homosexual sodomy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the US Supreme Court relied on and cited UN Conference Cycle language as “evidence” or “meaning” of the US Constitution. In this regard, international law has had a very real affect in shaping laws and policy in the United States.

One more example of this kind of “soft law” infiltration is in the redefinition of certain “consensus language.” Terms and expressions that meant one thing when a document was adopted are now being reinterpreted to mean another. The prime example of this is in the term “reproductive health services” which has now come to mean abortion, even though it was not originally intended to. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April that this Administration believes “reproductive health” includes access to abortion.

Do you think it is important to pay attention to the United Nations? UFI definitely thinks so. The effects of what happens there will continue to grow and we will most certainly continue to feel those effects here in our country, our states, our communities and even in our own homes.

So, what do we do about the things happening around us? How do we get involved? Well, just the fact that you are here today says something great about you. You are ready to jump in! Each of you has an important role to play.

Here are a few ideas for getting involved:

1. Be informed – watch the news, read books, read what is available on the internet in terms of news sources, blogs and other informational sites. Remember - Information is power!

2. Register to vote & then GO VOTE! Help other people in your neighborhood and community register to vote. Remind your neighbors and friends to vote on election day.

3. Actively address issues of concern – there may be issues of concern to you at a local school, at work, in your neighborhood, or city. Once you are informed, actively address your concerns by contacting those involved.  If you have a particular concern, there are probably many other people just like you. Raise your voice – make phone calls, send emails, blog, Twitter – let people hear from you, or they will never know there is a problem.

4. Join or volunteer for an organization in your community – You can volunteer, join, or financially contribute to groups that promote the things you believe in, at local levels as well as higher, more distant levels like the UN. We would love to have you join us at UFI! Let your talents and your interests guide you as you decide where to spend your time and energy.

5. Run for an elected position – school board, city council, state representative – we need good people in elected positions!

6. Teach your children and others around you to be civically minded - Through your example you will have a profound impact on your family, friends, neighbors and others. They will see your dedication and willingness to get out there and be involved, and many will feel inspired to participate also.

I want to close my remarks by telling you about one of the most remarkable women I have ever met. She is from Iraq and her name is Layla Alkhafaji. Her story has touched me very deeply and inspired me to do all that I can to defend and protect the values that I care so deeply about. After Layla finished college in Iraq she was targeted by the Ba’ath party and told she had to join. She refused this invitation and was put in prison, along with many of her friends. She suffered in prison for 10 years and had to endure beatings, torture, and even watched some of her friends die. She was finally able to escape after 10 years and fled to Canada where she lived in exile for 14 years. When Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled, she chose to return to Iraq to help rebuild her country. She now sits on the Iraqi parliament and works to improve government transparency, and improve the conditions in her country for women and children.

I had the privilege of meeting Layla at CSW in March. I listened to her speak in two different meetings as she told her remarkable story. I saw her in the hallway after the meeting and approached her to thank her for sharing her vision, her ideals and her dedication to important issues for women and families. She was incredibly gracious and humble and we had a wonderful discussion about UFI and what we stand for and also about her organization. Layla was at CSW representing Al Hakim Foundation, an organization that promotes intellectual excellence, religious dialogue and cultural understanding. She is a remarkable example of someone willing to sacrifice everything for the things she believes in.

When I think of Layla I feel inspired to try a little harder, despite any obstacles I may face, to make a positive difference in this world.

I know that each one of you also has a special role to play in making a positive difference in our country and our world. Your role may not be the same as the people around you. You are unique and you must do what you can at this time in your life. The important decision you must make is to become involved in whatever way suits you. As we each make this decision we will see great results and we will make our world a better place for ourselves and our families.