Right to marry and found family: a most challenged human right in post modern era
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Right to marry and found family: a most challenged human right in post modern era Rajyalakshmi Vundamati
The Indian Society of International Law 2020
Abstract Key human rights instruments at global and regional level guarantee the right to marry and found family. These instruments take into their fold both the individual and social components of family. Post modern social dynamics ushered in radical changes and challenges to the traditional conception of marriage and family as a matter of hetero sexual relationship with its natural procreative ability. These challenges are typically deriving support from the individual centric human rights ideology. In this background, the adoption of Resolution on Protection of Family by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2015 reaffirming the social component of the family as the natural and fundamental group unit of society and its entitlement to protection by society and the state is viewed by some as adversely impacting the acceptance of the post modern conceptions of marriage and family. This article attempts to examine the importance of marriage and family, the post modern challenges to the traditional conceptions of marriage and family, the global as well as regional responses to these challenges and the judiciousness of the critical outlook of post modern groups towards the social character of family. This article pays special attention to the criticism against the UNHRC Resolution on Protection of Family, 2015 which appeals to states to protect family as a natural and fundamental group unit of society. The Article advocates that the criticism is unwarranted and that the social character of the family needs to be rightly construed and its importance be rightly promoted. Keywords Marriage Family Traditional Post Modern Human right UNHRC
Rajyalakshmi Vundamati (&) Honorary Professor of Law, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India e-mail: [email protected]
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R. Vundamati
1 Introduction Marriage and family despite the varied forms in which they prevail in individual societies enjoy universal existence1 and importance. There is no society which does not hold family system as a common form of social organization. Society holds a special niche for marriage and family because marriage and family carry great personal and public value. They bring significant stability and meaning to human relationships. These are uniquely beneficial to society and in fact constitute the basic building block of society. Due to the varied characters of society in which it exists, family exists in varied forms so much so it is difficult to give a standard definition.2 Being social institutions, marriage and family do reflect social dynamics. To describe the relatively radical changes in the internal structure of the family as a social institution, some sociologists3 have introduced the term postmodern family. Very typically families are based on ties of blood and marriage, and differ in regard to the degrees of relation included in the definition of the te
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