Programs
Friday Fax
The Friday Fax is the only originally-reported weekly news source on UN social policy. Founded in 1997, the Friday Fax has a readership of 100,000 that includes diplomats, policy makers, parliamentarians, journalists, and activists from all over the world.
International Organizations Research Group (IORG)
IORG is the research arm of C-FAM. IORG has gathered a group of scholars from various academic disciplines and practitioners from international institutions who produce papers for policy makers, academics and activists. IORG publishes a peer-reviewed White Papers series, Special Reports, Briefing Papers, and scholarly papers for academic conferences.
International Organizations Law Group (The Law Group)
The Law Group is the legal arm of C-FAM and is an ad hoc group of legal practitioners and distinguished law professors from around the world who are concerned that international instruments are used to advance a radical social agenda and undercut the rule of law. The Law Group follows international and national legal developments and coordinates timely and intelligent responses.
To read the Law Group's amicus curiae submission to the Mexican National Supreme Court of Justice regarding Mexico City's abortion law, click here: (English) (Spanish)
To read the Law Group's amicus curiae submission to the Mexican National Supreme Court of Justice regarding Baja California's state constitutional amendment defending life from conception, click here: (Spanish)
The Law Group has also submitted a shadow report to Inter-American Commission for Human Rights as to why abortion providers should not be considered "human rights defenders."
Center for UN Documents
The main voice with which the UN speaks to the world is through documents which are negotiated among UN Member States. The Center for UN Documents is a compendium of the most important documents negotiated by UN Member States concerning international social policy.
The Center lists documents which are binding on States that ratify them, such as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and those that are non-binding documents stating aspirations such as the 1994 Plan of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo.
CEDAW Watch
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is one of the most widely ratified documents in history. And it has been the source of extraordinary controversy. The document, which is binding on States parties, was negotiated by member States of the UN. But its words have been continually reinterpreted by a monitoring committee and then used by the committee and some national courts and parliaments to change national laws, often without the knowledge and against the will of the citizenry.
C-FAM's CEDAW Watch has followed the CEDAW committee since 1997. This program provides policy makers and citizens with the information they need to understand what CEDAW is all about and how to protect their national laws from the harmful effects of the activist committee.
Monitoring & Lobbying
The primary work of C-FAM focuses on the negotiation of UN documents, either non-binding resolutions or binding international treaties.
C-FAM personnel have participated in every major international social policy negotiation in the past ten years, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the UN Declaration on Human Cloning, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ICPD+5, Beijing+5 and dozens of others. Additionally, C-FAM covers the day-to-day meetings of various UN committees and commissions.
C-FAM works closely with a few dozen UN Missions to the United Nations. Since 1997 C-FAM has recruited, trained and led hundreds of volunteers to work with C-FAM and its coalition partners at UN negotiations.
Conferences
C-FAM has organized many conferences on UN social policy and international institutions in New York, Rome, Paris, Vienna, and Washington, D.C.
C-FAM has organized conferences at UN headquarters on the natural law, in Rome on international law, in Rome on bioethics, in Washington DC on end-of-life issues, and annually brings together social conservative leaders in various European capitols.
C-FAM's research arm, IORG, has chaired academic panels at the International Studies Association, an annual meeting of thousands of academics from all over the world, as well at the conferences of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and has presented its research at the European Union Studies Association bi-annual meeting.
