NEW YORK — Negotiations for an upcoming U.N. session on the rights of children have pro-family advocates concerned about the future legal status of the family.

The U.N. General Assembly's Special Session on Children, scheduled to take place in New York in late September, is a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children in New York, which it calls a “universal appeal to give every child a better future.”

But current U.N. plans would have parents playing a secondary role to the state in the lives of their own children, pro-family representatives warn.

“There is a particular danger for children in what we see as an advancing view that children need special protection of rights safeguarded by the state,” said Anna Halpine, co-founder and president of the World Youth Alliance, in New York.

“That's a huge concern we have because when the state comes in, you are at the mercy of the fashions of a particular time. The education and development — spiritual, psychological and emotional — of the child are best safeguarded in the family.”

When U.N. delegates gather in New York in September, they will rubberstamp a document that is being negotiated right now.

The negotiating process began in October and continues next at a Jan. 29-Feb.2 meeting at U.N. headquarters.

For the last several years, pitched battles have been waged at such meetings between, on the one hand, non-governmental organizations that recognize the family and their allies on developing world delegations, and on the other, feminist and population-control groups and their backers among Western nations.

Pro-lifers say unexpected deletions or insertions to the first draft of the U.N. plan could dramatically alter its meaning and effect.

Such insertions commonly involve innocuous-sounding phrases, such as “reproductive health services,” that can subsequently be interpreted as mandating abortion-on-demand or artificial contraceptives.

“One of the things we see over and over at the U.N., and at this summit, is this semantic game which is difficult to explain to people and difficult to portray concisely in the press,” said the World Youth Alliance's Halpine in a reference to draft-document negotiations.

Halpine's group is an international organization formed in 1999 that aims at increasing youth involvement in the international decision-making process, with an eye toward defending and promoting life, the family and what its Web site refers to as “true development.”

Halpine said that UNICEF, the U.N. agency responsible for guiding preparations for the Youth Summit, “sees its direction as heading more toward advocacy” of controversial social agendas “rather than on-the-ground assistance.”

She said the coming meetings could accelerate this shift in direction.

For example, in the section on “early childhood development,” the draft document says “women of child-bearing age must have access to quality reproductive health services.”

Holy See Position

Msgr. James Reinert, an attache of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, could not comment on specific portions of the draft because he had not yet received instructions from Rome on the Vatican's official concerns. He did say the Holy See would focus upon the involvement and the rights of parents regarding their children.

Msgr. Reinert characterized the Holy See's working relationship with UNICEF, which was strained by the Vatican's decision in 1994 to withdraw its annual donation to UNICEF because of its involvement in abortion, as “good.”

“There are some issues that UNICEF has involved itself in that the Holy See has difficulty with accepting but for the most part we see them as very good in 99% of its work,” he said.

Overall, Msgr. Reinert said he “did not have any grave concerns” about the document as it currently stands. But, he added, “That could all change when the second draft comes out after January.”

Restrictions on Family Advocates

Halpine believes that it was fear of resistance to its anti-family agenda that recently prompted UNICEF officials to limit non-governmental organization to two representatives each in future negotiations.

UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside denied the charge, saying the restrictions were imposed in order to “keep the meetings manageable.”

“This has become a common practice for U.N. summits. It also applies to all NGO delegations, without regard to mission, motives or special issues,” Ironside added.

Halpine countered that in her experience she has never seen the United Nations limit accreditation to such meetings. And given that only a tiny percentage of the 3,000 organizations accredited to the international body are pro-life and pro-family, “a limitation of the number of possible spots could only limit those who want to present a pro-life/pro-family view,” she said.

To veteran U.N.-watcher Dan Zeidler, U.S. representative for the Caracas-based Latin American Alliance for the Family, the upcoming summit is being driven by “an agenda that has to be fought and resisted.”

Zeidler believes the draft document fails in its primary goal of articulating ways to protect and promote the rights of children. He cited what he said was its lack of adequate recognition of the family in the life of a child.

“Families are where children are born and developed,” Zeidler said. “Families are what need to be strengthened, not set aside or weakened.”

UNICEF's Ironside downplayed the concerns of Halpine and Zeidler. He said the purpose of the Special Session is to “take stock of progress made on the goals set at the World Summit for Children and to establish a new agenda for children that re-energizes the word of governments, civil society groups, NGOs and U.N. agencies on behalf of children.

“At the heart of these efforts,” Ironside added, “is an abiding concern for the dignity, health and development of every child, especially those at the mercy of crushing poverty, war and civil conflict, HIV/AIDS and other diseases and discrimination.”

Halpine said such goals were indeed laudable, but cautioned that UNICEF's “use of a significant portion of its resources to promote and finance abortion in the Third World” is “very disturbing” for a lot of people.

“UNICEF is perceived as a great humanitarian agency that protects children and yet they now pursue policies and advocate for something which is obviously destructive of the child in the most complete sense.”