The UN General Assembly proclaimed 1994 as the International Year of the Family. The purpose of this action was to draw the attention of the authorities of UN member states and the general public to the problems of families and to take comprehensive measures for the benefit of families and children.
Last year, 2004, the UN General Assembly marked the 10th anniversary of the International Year of the Family. This date was seen as an opportunity for the UN to take stock of the situation of families and to create momentum towards developing and implementing mechanisms to ensure that adequate policies for families are implemented.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 16, Paragraph 3) stresses that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. In recent years in the Russian Federation there have been significant changes that have affected the situation of families: negative phenomena in the economic and social life of society; crisis of spiritual development; limited opportunities to meet life needs; sharp differentiation in the level of material security; alcoholism, drug addiction, propaganda of violence and cruelty in the mass media; imperfections in the current legislation.
The family – the primary cell or “crystal” of society, the microcosm of the growing child nowadays, for both objective and subjective reasons, increasingly fails to fulfill its most important functions: the proper upbringing of children and their protection from the complexities of today’s reality.
