Last updated on May 16th, 2025 at 05:30 am
IOF has submitted the following statement, joined by organizations around the world, to all UN ambassadors in New York for the International Day of Families on May 15, 2025.
Protect and Promote Your National Treasure!
The International Day of Families 2025
If there is a more important day among those the United Nations has designated for worldwide observance than the International Day of Families, we don’t know about it. A core component of the legacy of the late Pope Francis was his teaching about the family.
Every threat to the family is a threat to society itself. The future of humanity passes through the family. So protect your families! See in them your country’s greatest treasure and nourish them always.
He is not the only religious leader to have so spoken. President Russell M. Nelson declared,
On all sides, the family is under attack. If there is any hope for the future of nations, that hope resides in the family. Our children are our wealth; our children are our strength; our children are indeed our future! The happiest and most secure children come from happy and secure marriages of fathers and mothers.
Nor is it just religious leaders who have proclaimed the truth about the family. According to Michael Novak, US Ambassador to the Commission on Human Rights,
Political and social planning in a wise social order begins with the axiom, “What strengthens the family strengthens society.” The roles of a father and a mother, and of children with respect to them, is the absolutely critical center of social force.
Moldovan President Igor Dodon likewise affirmed, “The family is the most important social institution.” Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar stated, “The family is the driving force behind social progress and development.” And author Alex Haley insisted, “The family is our refuge and our springboard; nourished on it, we can advance to new horizons. In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”
What these modern voices proclaim about the family is no modern discovery but rather a truth as old as time. “The family is the ultimate foundation of every civilization known to history,” wrote historian Will Durant, who considered Confucius the greatest thinker of all time for his insight that the world cannot be put in order without first putting in order the family—which was precisely what the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights attempted to do in the wake of World War II when they recognized only one group unit as having rights, and proclaimed, “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”
Not satisfied with having this provision appear solely in the non-binding Universal Declaration, the United Nations later not only included it in a treaty document—the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—but also clarified the level of protection to which the family is entitled: “The widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society.”
We therefore call on all Member States to embrace this year’s International Day of Families not as an occasion to be celebrated and forgotten but rather as an opportunity to:
- Fulfil their treaty obligation to provide “the widest possible protection and assistance… to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society”;
- Resist the deceptively labeled agendas that march under the banner of rights but in fact undermine the family as the natural and fundamental group unit of society;
- Foster a culture that honors and enables faithful, fulfilling, and resilient marriages;
- Recognize and support the uniquely valuable contributions of both mothers and fathers to the lives of their children;
- Encourage the values and vision necessary for the rising generation to look forward to and prepare for successful marriage and parenting; and
- Protect, promote, and strengthen the family as the irreplaceable foundation of civilization and our only hope for prosperity, peace, and progress.
Respectfully,
International Organization for the Family
United Families International
Center for Family and Human Rights
Universal Peace Federation
American Family Advocates
CitizenGO, Spain
Latin American Alliance for the Family
Family First, New Zealand
HazteOir, Spain
REAL Women of Canada
Alive to the World
Worldwide Organization for Women
FamilyPolicy.RU Advocacy Group, Russia
Native American Fatherhood & Families Association