DOHA, November 29 (IslamOnline.net) – The Doha International Conference for the Family commenced Monday, November 29, with a call for establishing a global research and studies center to protect the family’s social structure and fabric.

“All peoples should stand firmly in the face of destructive calls targeting the unity and concept of family, which contradict the three monotheistic religions and the conscience of humankind,” Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Misnad, consort of the Qatari emir, said in her inaugural speech.

She said the proposed international pro-family research center will lay the ground work for family sciences in the third millennium.

“Calls of modernity can not be taken as a pretext to twist religious, cultural and social values, which protect the family’s fabric,” she told an attentive audience.

“There is no common denominator better able to bridge the gap between the different peoples of the world, despite conflicts and diversity, than the firm belief in the sacredness of the family.”

Sheikha Mozah noted that the proposed research center would table useful pro-family initiatives and coordinate between regional and United Nations family programs by drawing up studies and organizing seminars.

“It will provide the much-needed logistic support for the concept of family.”

Sheikha Mozah, also President of Qatar’s Supreme Council for Family Affairs, further urged governments worldwide to thrash out all legal, political, economic and social obstacles to the message of the family.

“Eradicating poverty and illiteracy is not enough to protect the family from disintegration,” she said.

“It, nevertheless, makes a strategic tool out of the family for development and reconstruction.”

UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, through his representative, said governments, the civil society, enterprises and the United Nations should “reaffirm global commitment to the families.”

Professor Richard G. Wilkins, Managing Directory of World Family Policy Center, noted that the year-long preparation for this conference, which has involved many people from many nations and cultures, demonstrates that a clash of civilizations is not inevitable.

“We are all united by shared understandings of family,” he said.

In a similar vein, Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa said that the conference is held in a troubled climate for the Arab world, but also a hopeful climate.

It allows visitors to register their personal information, add documents, whether issued by themselves or their organizations, search the directory to find pro-family organizations and/or activists both in English and in Arabic, browse the list of registered organizations and activists and browse the documents of other active institutions both in English and in Arabic.

Held under the patronage of the Qatari First Lady, the two-day international conference brings together 150 world dignitaries and pro-family NGOs.

Chief among them are former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohammad, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, President of the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS), Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, the president of the World Council for Churches, and Gary S. Becker, 1992 Nobel Laureate in economics.

The conference seeks solutions to problems of families such as poverty, tension between traditional values and new values, challenges to parental authority and increased divorce rates.

It is the culmination of a series of regional conferences, cross-cultural dialogues, and local meetings that have been taking place this year in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the first International Year of the Family.

The conference will conclude by adopting the Doha Declaration which will emphasize the importance of restating the family and will call upon governments to be committed to promote the role of family and to protect it as a fundamental unit of which society is made.

Many of the issues important to the family will be debated next year at a huge UN conference that is commonly known as Beijing +10.