As the United Nations General Assembly convenes for its annual gathering this week in New York, there are conflicts aplenty to address. Sadly, among areas of tension is a topic that many around the world hold especially dear: family. Against a backdrop of earnest assertions that family is society’s bedrock, an international struggle, seemingly increasingly organized, touches on what family means and what that implies for a wide range of policies. Conflicts around the meaning and the essence of family involve transnational networks of governments, religious organizations, political movements, philanthropies, and civil-society advocates. An immediate setting is the United Nations headquarters, but the tensions have tentacles elsewhere, including in regional institutions and in various multilateral organizations.
A central concern is that language touching on family values, cultural integrity, religious traditions, parental rights, and national sovereignty is invoked to resist or reverse protections for women and girls. A Capital FM article illustrates the concerns, reporting on a SHE & Rights discussion ahead of the UN General Assembly. Topics in dispute are marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance, marital rape, child marriage, female genital mutilation, sexuality education, and access to reproductive healthcare. Measures presented as protecting families can, translated into language and policy, reinforce male authority, and, translated into language and policy, make women’s rights conditional on obedience. These debates have deep roots, evident in various forums inside and outside the United Nations family of institutions over recent decades. In 2014, a Human Rights Council resolution on the “Protection of the Family” narrowly passed. Among points of disagreement was the very definition of “the family” and recognition that various forms of family exist in all societies, and concern that human rights abuses of individuals, in particular women and children, often occur within families but are rarely addressed by states.
The gathering family values coalition is sometimes described as an “unholy alliance”, because it brings together actors that otherwise would seem to have little in common: conservative Catholic and evangelical organizations, some Muslim and Christian and Jewish Orthodox leaders, governments with an authoritarian bent, nationalist politicians, anti-abortion organizations, and Western conservative advocacy networks. A recent UN Today article argues that this is no loose or marginal coalition. Its participants share funding, legal strategies, political language, and communications techniques. Rather than relying exclusively on explicitly religious arguments, they invoke science, child protection, health, parental freedom, sovereignty, and resistance to Western cultural imperialism. The Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international that took form in 2020, rejects an international right to abortion and emphasizes the family as society’s fundamental unit, and represents an important expression of this coalition. I wrote about aspects of the movement 15 years ago, prompted by a bewildered Scandinavian colleague who asked me to explain what seemed like incongruous positions in UN negotiations.
Deep mutual suspicions are at work. Earlier this year, in the context of the 2026 UN Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW), Devex (an independent news organization and data platform dedicated to the global development community) described two rival mobilizations. UN agencies, international aid organizations, and generally progressive governments were defending women’s rights and reproductive-health language, while nearby, the Conference on the State of Women and Family brought together some faith-linked organizations, anti-abortion activists, and sympathetic governments that accused the UN and Western donors of imposing contested ideas about abortion, sexuality, and gender identity on poorer countries. Both camps portrayed themselves as resisting a powerful and well-financed adversary.
Africa has become an important arena for this struggle. The Guardian reports on a proposed African Charter on Family, Sovereignty and Values. The draft privileges heterosexual marriage, rejects comprehensive sexuality education and diverse gender identities, and challenges existing sexual and reproductive-rights commitments. Its supporters present the charter as an authentically African defense against foreign ideologies. Critics contend that its language and strategies reflect considerable influence from conservative Christian organizations in the United States and Europe. They argue that defining rights primarily through the family can leave women, children, and LGBTQ people vulnerable to coercion within families.
What would be most unfortunate would be for religion or family life themselves to be seen as the enemy. Many religious organizations are leaders in efforts to advance the diversity of women’s rights that are so essential in today’s dynamic world. To take just one example, Musawah, a Southeast Asia based organization, has developed egalitarian arguments from within Islamic law and trains advocates, lawyers, and judges to challenge discriminatory interpretations. Many religious communities (CRSD, a Senegalese interfaith organization for example) support family planning, women’s dignity, protection from violence, and equal rights. Again in the context of the UNCSW, in 2025 several interreligious groups (the Gender Working Group of the Multi-Faith Advisory Council, members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Sustainable Development, and the Network of Religious and Traditional Peacemakers) co-hosted a roundtable event with UN agencies, faith organizations, and civil society that highlighted good practices, success stories, challenges, and experiences that demonstrate positive faith-based responses to advancing the Beijing+30 commitments. In 2014 a diverse group of religious actors who met at the United Nations issued a powerful statement contesting what they saw as approaches undermining women’s rights and welfare with the powerful title “Not in our Name”. Faith for Rights, a UN human rights initiative, brings religious actors and human rights advocates together to protect the rights of everyone. The fundamental contest is therefore not religion versus secular approaches or theological approaches versus human rights, but between different interpretations of religion, family, authority, and human dignity.
The terms “Unholy alliance,” “anti-rights,” and “backlash” reflect the significant patterns of coordination among different actors. They can, however, obscure differences among and within religious traditions and dismiss legitimate concerns about cultural autonomy or coercive population policies. Conversely, “family values” can disguise restrictions that do little to strengthen families materially and that challenge important areas of human rights and dignity. Engagement beyond international conferences on the topic is essential: in homes, schools, religious institutions, courts, legislatures, and communities. The question which demands clear, prophetic answers is who defines the family, whose voices count within it, and whether protecting families strengthens the rights of their members or subordinates individuals to an idealized family structure. There’s ample evidence that mutual respect among family members, however much they differ, including freedom to choose one’s path, is consistent with the north star principles of different faiths and the core values and ideals on which the United Nations was founded 81 years ago.
