DOHA, NOV 29, 2004 (VIS) - The Doha International Conference on the Family opened today in the capital of Qatar in the presence of 1,500 guests including Skeikha Moza Bint Nasser Al-Missned, wife of the emir of Qatar and foundress and president of Qatar's Supreme Council for Family Affairs which is sponsoring the conference.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, accompanied by several members of the council, is representing the Holy See. He will address the assembly tomorrow on "The Complementarity of Men and Women: Building on the Strengths of Mothers and Fathers."
Other guests include Richard Wilkins, director of the World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University in Utah, which was asked to organize the two-day event, Dr. Gary Becker, Nobel prize-winning economist from the University of Chicago, members of governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scholars, academicians and civil and religious leaders, including Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Church in Egypt.
The Doha Conference, which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the First International Year of the Family, intends to both examine the statement in Article 16, no. 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state," and to review worldwide policies on the family. The conference hopes to show that focusing on the family is a sure guide to sustainable social health and the good of society.
Regional conferences have preceded the Doha meeting: the World Congress of Families in Mexico City in March; International Family Day in Sweden in May, the European Family Dialogue in Geneva in August and the Pacific and Asian Family Dialogue in Kuala Lumpur last month. There was also a preparatory conference in the Philippines.
Among the topics on the conference agenda: The Family in the Third Millennium vis-a-vis development, globalization and international policies to protect the family; Religious and Juridic Cases of the Third Millennium Family; The Family and Education, and The Family and the Culture of Dialogue, with a look at the role of the media and its influence on the family. Speakers will discuss the dignity and worth of human life, the benefits of marriage, motherhood and fatherhood, faith and modern families, the role of values on society, ageing and the family and government policy and the family.
A communiqué on the conference stated that '' the meeting will conclude its events by adopting the Doha Declaration which will carry a message to the states of the world emphasizing the importance of restating the family and will call upon governments to be committed to promoting the role of the family and its protection as a fundamental unit of society.''
…/CONFERENCE FAMILY/DOHA TRUJILLO VIS 20041129 (470)
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