International Family Remembrance Week

International Family Remembrance Week will be launched on the 14th November 2011 to bring attention to harms wrought by the legal transference of filiation through adoption legislation. Filiation is the fact of being a son or daughter of a given parent and is a relation which can be said to form a new branch of society; hence, the symbol of the Family Tree.


The symbol of the Family Tree at left is to signify not only loss of filiation by severance of legal channels to its knowledge and honour, but of the love of the parent as guardian of human rights.  


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights maintains that, in nations protected by its ratification:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 12)

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, regards identity:Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity. (Article 8)

The Convention of the Rights of the Child came into force on 2 September 1990.  Australia was one of the first countries to become a party to it, in December 1990, and it became binding on Australia in January 1991.


International Family Awareness Week, soon to be launched in Australia, calls on governments to condemn the abuse associated with the denial and stigmatization of human identity through adoption legislation.


Family Remembrance Week 2011 will conclude on the 21st November 2011, which is the date which has been set down for the handing down of a world first, national inquiry into forced adoption.


During Family Remembrance Week, we celebrate the human dignity of all mothers, fathers and their children taken for adoption.