Moscow Demographic Summit Ends With Demand for Governments to Adopt a "Pro-Family Demographic Policy"

MOSCOW, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following release is being issued by the World Congress of Families:

"The WCF Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and The Future of Humankind"  concluded with the adoption of a Declaration demanding that governments everywhere adopt pro-family demographic policies.  The Declaration was adopted by participants at the June 29-30 Summit held at the Russian State Social University, Russia's largest university.

Translated from Russian, The Declaration states in part:

"We, participants of the Moscow Demographic Summit, representing families from various social, ethnic and religious communities, leading experts in the field of the family and demography, public activists, NGOs, leaders of parents associations, representatives of the leading business, educational and diplomatic institutions, members of national Governments and Parliaments and other responsible forces of the civil society, representing 65 countries of the world, hereby declare that the Natural Family is the basic unit of society and the fundamental social value, that is a necessary prerequisite for the very existence of world civilizations and the whole humankind.

"We express our deep concern about the dangers of the approaching worldwide depopulation. Despite wrong and biased information about 'overpopulation' threat promoted by some mass media and international institutions, in reality already for several decades in a row we have been witnessing a global process of demographic degradation…. In the nearest historical period, the negative demographic trends can bring about extinction of whole peoples, destruction of States, and disappearance of unique cultures and civilizations. Even according to conservative estimates by the UN, within next three decades, the total fertility rate will go down below the population replacement level all over the world. In reality, it can happen much earlier, thus making the whole world community face the unprecedented social and historical problem of humankind survival.

"We are alarmed by the fact that the family institution is in a state of grave social crisis which consists in the destruction of universal family, conjugal and parental roles based on traditional family values; in the disruption of the reproductive function of the family; in an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, caused by the imposition of contraceptive thinking (in terms of safe sex) and destructive premarital and extramarital sex patterns; in widespread divorce; in the spreading of cohabitation without marriage; in increasing numbers of single-parent families; a wave of social deviations (abortions, homosexuality, pedophilia, drug addiction, refusal of marriage and childbearing (the child-free phenomenon), prostitution, pornography, etc.); disruption of the process of socialization of young generations; cutting of ties among relatives and alienation of different generations within one family, etc.

"We call on the governments of all nations and on international institutions to develop immediately a pro-family demographic policy and to adopt a special international pro-family strategy and action plan aimed at consolidating family and marriage, protecting human life from conception to natural death, increasing birth rates, and averting the menace of depopulation."

Click here to read the Declaration of the Moscow Demographic Summit in its entirety.  "The Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and The Future of Humankind," was blessed by Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, and welcomed by a resolution of the Russian State Duma. Speakers included demographers, sociologists, historians, officeholders, pro-family/pro-life leaders and representatives of the world's great religions.

Click here for message of Patriarch Kirill.  Click here for resolution of the Duma.

Click here for the complete program, including titles of speeches, of "The Moscow Demographic Summit: The Family and the Future of Humankind."

For the website of the Moscow Demographic Summit (in English and Russian) click here.

For More Information on World Congress of Families, go to www.worldcongress.org.  To schedule an interview with WCF Managing Director Larry Jacobs contact Don Feder at 508-405-1337, [email protected] or Lisa Youngblood at 815-964-5819, [email protected].

 The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois.  To date, there have been five World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw, Poland (2007) and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2009).  World Congress of Families VI will be held in Madrid, Spain in May 25-27, 2012.

SOURCE World Congress of Families