Fair Start Movement

Category: Children’s Rights

  • Worried About Having Children in the Climate Crisis? Your Human Rights Were Violated. Fight Back. 

    Worried About Having Children in the Climate Crisis? Your Human Rights Were Violated. Fight Back. 

    The UN has been obligated to interpret the promise of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that of a right “to found a family,” in a way that would protect the right for all generations equally. This includes those in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and those in 2050 for example, equally. It should have also interpreted Article 16 consistent with other human rights obligations, like the Children’s Rights Convention, and well as the Sustainable Development Goals.

    Mountains of evidence show young persons are not able to exercise their right equally because of many population-driven threats to the children they would have, including significant birth impacts. In other words, the UN failed to interpret and administer Article 16 correctly.

    In fact it caved to member state pressures to maintain large and unsustainable families and population growth rates in the Twentieth century, and violated future generations’ rights to safely and sustainably found their families under Article 16. Because men – under enabling from the UN – pushed women to have large families in the past, younger generations today have to worry about having even one child, given the ecological future that child faces. Moreover, women who were pushed to have children under the growth paradigm enabled by the UN’s modeling – and have children despite the risks of Covid-19 – are dying in massively disproportionate numbers. We need to hold those who enabled this accountable.

    Read the draft process Fair Start is developing to seek justice before the United Nations Human Rights Council.

    The best way to compensate young people and future generations for this violation of their rights is by properly interpreting Article 16 via Fair Start modeling, which encourages birth equity-level transfers of resources as Fair Start family planning incentives/entitlements. This is forward-facing climate reparations at their best. Given the special foundational nature of Article 16, and when properly interpreted its peremptory status as the grundnorm overriding even state-created property rights, younger persons have the right to take the Fair Start resources they need and we will encourage them to do, including those that will ensure future children’s enjoyment of their rights under the Children’s Rights Convention. 

    Infographic showing ways to reduce carbon emissions: reducing fertility rates, doubling car fuel efficiency, increasing wind energy 50-fold, and tripling nuclear energy. Includes icons of a car, windmill, and nuclear symbol.

    Activists should start by engaging the relatively wealthy children of UN officials, in this special  form of lawful and peaceful constitutional dialogue and social change, geared around our just desert to family planning incentives/entitlements. There is nothing more just than targeting an extant minority for the benefit of the countless future majority. This process will build, targeting the concentrations of wealth and power – both public and private – most responsible for the climate and other crises we face today, including those that most benefited from past, inequitable and unsustainable interpretations of Article 16.

    Take action: Urge United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres @antonioguterres to speak out and act to protect all generations’ right to found a family.

    Line graph showing global population (in billions) and CO2 (relative) from 1800 to 2050. Both lines rise slowly at first, then sharply increase around 1950, with population slightly above CO2 in recent decades.

  • Afghanistan Nightmare: Look to the United Nations and Family Policies of the Past

    Afghanistan Nightmare: Look to the United Nations and Family Policies of the Past

    As Afghanistan descends into a human rights catastrophe, we should look for the mistakes that created the crisis and learn from them. Afghanistan has had one of the highest birthrates in the world, driven by a dominant patriarchy.

    Given this, did the United Nations intervene decades ago to protect women and children through aggressive family planning programming meant to ensure compliance with the Children’s Rights Convention, and to free women from the structure that treated them primarily as mothers? It did not, instead choosing to embrace the isolation modeling that treats the act of having children as as something left to the subjective whims of the parents, and nobody else’s business.

    This was a major missed opportunity, laying the foundation for the birth and development of a ballooning number of children in conditions that would ensure the chaos we see today. In creating its system, the UN bent to pressure from male-dominated members – including the United States – who saw population growth as an easy way to create economic growth.

    Both involve the exploitation of vulnerable entities – women, future children, and the nonhuman world – to empower men. The story of Afghanistan is the story of ignoring the impact of massive family size, abysmal child welfare, vast inequity, and the failure to prepare children as effective members of democracies.

    Eerily, it finds echoes in the patriarchy here in the United States eagerly pushing women to have more and more kids.

    A comparison chart of Current Family Planning vs. Fair Start Family Planning. The left side lists negatives of current planning; the right side highlights positive outcomes of fair start planning for welfare, equality, and environmental protection.

    What’s the solution? Had the United Nations adopted and implemented the correct interpretation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to found a family, which treats the provision as the dominant human right and child-centric in nature (focused on the most vulnerable entities, and those with the most at stake), this situation could have been avoided.

    TAKE ACTION: Urge the United Nations to change course and stop creating nightmares like what we are seeing in Afghanistan.

     

  • Calling for Voices: Think Your Future Child Deserves a Fair Start?

    Calling for Voices: Think Your Future Child Deserves a Fair Start?

    This past Fourth of July, two everyday people Cassie and Matt – exemplified what it would mean to constitute communities that are actually free, in part by compensating future generations for the harm we have caused them through the climate, inequity and other ecosocial crises.

    They are living the truth that justice for future generations overrides all other obligations, including property rights. Older generations lied about the “private” nature of family planning to protect concentrations of wealth and power from distributive obligations to future generations. That lie is fundamentally blocking justice.

    Listen to this brief podcast to understand why.

    Cassie, an activist and nonprofit professional said this about family planning:

    Current corrupt concentrations of power push a growth model that promotes unsustainable family planning policies. They see us ordinary people as economic inputs in their machine, to use for our reproductive and other labor. It’s our job to fight that narrative and elevate the worth of every individual to have their basic needs met, on day one. My partner and I hope to adopt children one day and I feel the urgency to ensure that my future child, and all children, have the resources and opportunities that are their right.

    Matt, a donor to the Fair Start Movement, said this:

    I support the Fair Start Movement because I know that any claims I have to property and wealth are subject to ensuring every child a fair and equitable start in life, the first and overriding human right. I’m willing to step forward, as a donor, and say that. I challenge others to do the same.

    Together, they are exemplifying a real new deal, one that fixes the fundamental source of the biggest problems in the world today, and leads to a comprehensively liberated state of affairs. It’s not about population. It’s about people, the vast majority of people, who will exist in the future. It’s about putting their interests first. And if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to plan for a child. Government derives from the people which derive from their creation. A just creation norm thus precedes and overrides everything else, including the government assigned property rights that have created massive power differentials between rich and poor.

    We can spread this modeling, and this simple discourse: “Part of your wealth is my and my future child’s family planning entitlement and incentive.

    TAKE ACTION:

    1. Do you feel your child or future child deserves a level playing field and equal opportunities in life, relative to wealthy children – the many  millionaire and billionaire kids who will impact your child’s life?
    2. What if your child or future child had a human right to that fair start ? Would you advocate for policies, and direct action, to ensure that right?
    3. If you are someone with wealth, would you be willing to speak out in support of that right and those policies?

    Can you help us find groups of people to enlarge the discourse that future children’s right to an ecosocial Fair Start in life overrides property rights, and necessitates distribution that will incentivize the most comprehensive and effective solution to the crises we face – Fair Start family planning?

    Urge those you know who are willing to step forward and say this to contact Ashley Berke at Ashley@fairstartmovement.org

    Several hands of different skin tones are stacked together. Overlaid text reads, The most powerful social justice is a fair start in life. Join the coalition. The Fair Start Movement logo appears at the bottom.
  • Orgs Are Speaking Out on Smaller Families, and It’s Having an Impact

    Orgs Are Speaking Out on Smaller Families, and It’s Having an Impact

    Kudos to Fair Start Movement coalition member, Population Matters for bringing attention to the topic of sustainable families. The group awarded $695 to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to be gifted to the charity of their choice, for making the decision to limit their family to two kids. The award, which is garnering headlines and serving to break the taboo, was timed to coincide with the U.N.’s World Population Day.

    Prince Harry revealed the couple’s plans to limit their family size due to environmental concerns back in 2019. Earlier that year we wrote to Megan as well, urging the couple to serve as role models and incorporate sustainability into family planning. It took courage for them to make that statement and it likely would not have happened without the great teamwork and encouragement from Population Matters and Jane Goodall. 

    Despite the endless supply of alarmist stories about declining birthrates, cultural perspectives are beginning to shift and recognize the numerous social and emotional benefits of choosing to have only one or two kids. Choosing a smaller family is also the most effective way to reduce climate impact. 

    The environmental impact of smaller families:

    It’s time for more environmental organizations to inspire eco-conscious parents to choose to have smaller families to reduce human impact on animals and the planet.

    Take Action: Share this headline with your favorite animal and environmental organizations, and urge them to follow suit in promoting more sustainable families. 

    Tweet:

    • Carter Roberts, @Carter_Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund
    • Annie Leonard, @AnnieMLeonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA
    • Michael Brune, @bruneski, executive director of the Sierra Club
    and ask them to take a stand on the most effective way to protect our future: policies that promote sustainable and equitable family planning.

  • World Population Day: Young Women, Sustainable Families, and Our Right to Take the Wealth Our Kids Deserve

    World Population Day: Young Women, Sustainable Families, and Our Right to Take the Wealth Our Kids Deserve

    The climate and nature crises that our planet faces are rooted in both population and consumption.  We cannot waste precious time by pointing fingers between consumption and population – we need to talk about both in tandem, as our survival and quality of life, and those of our children, depend on it. 

    On the heels of Independence Day demands from people like Cassie King for the resources all kids deserve to ensure their eco-social Fair Start in life, and others who see their future child’s entitlement to birth equity as a sustainable family planning incentive, dozens of young women have come forward to speak out for more sustainable families. It’s a message for every young person’s future on planet earth.

    On World Population Day, July 11, 2021, GirlPlanet.Earth will launch as an informal forum for global dialogue by women and teenage girls from around the world on population, consumption, planetary boundaries, and personal choices.  Featuring the voices of women from Africa, Europe, North America, Central America, and Asia, GirlPlanet.Earth will enable honest, authentic, lively conversations between women and girls about our future.

    A group of students sit at desks in a classroom, attentively listening and taking notes. The focus is on a girl in a plaid shirt, resting her chin on her hand and looking forward thoughtfully.
    Courtesy of the Urban Institute.

    Join the conversation.

    In addition to young voices pushing back on unsustainable population growth, this Sunday – World Population Day – key experts will make clear the pathway to an optimal world population, at this special event.

    Having one fewer child actually reduces your carbon footprint more than any other single move you can make. We owe it to future generations to ignore advertiser-bound media pushing women to have kids to grow their economies. Instead, those intending to have small and sustainable families should approach concentrations of power for the wealth – and birth equity – their child has a fundamental right to under the Children’s Rights Convention and other human rights instruments.

    Infographic showing ways to reduce carbon emissions: reducing fertility rates, doubling car fuel efficiency, increasing wind energy 50-fold, and tripling nuclear energy. Includes icons of a car, windmill, and nuclear symbol.

    This is the time to restart the conversation about family sizes, resources, population, personal choice, climate change and the future of our planet. The science is clear – we get the best outcomes, for everyone, when families plan for and invest more love, time, and attention in each child. 

    Stabilizing our human population, even through the most fundamental educational and economic advancement of women, has been taboo for too long.  Humanity has made terrible mistakes through coercive practices and policies, and stabilizing our population needs to be instead profoundly rooted in improved justice, education, and economic opportunity, especially for women and girls.  

     

  • The Fundamental Justice Mistake We Must Correct

    The Fundamental Justice Mistake We Must Correct

    In the middle of the twentieth century world leaders misinterpreted the right to have children under Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure a particular level of continued population growth to grow their base, to reinforce power structures, and to evade collective obligations to invest more in kids. Their family planning systems ignored the physical borders of human power and were designed as preconstitutional or illegitimate, to create lots of economic inputs for shopping malls, not politically empowered citizens with influential voices for town halls. The systems isolated parents, and required no minimum level of welfare at birth or the development of prosocial behavior in children, in violation of the Children’s Rights Convention, no level playing field between rich and poor kids, and no environmental sustainability. Public interest mostly groups went along with this plan.  

    That move fundamentally created the ecosocial crises we face today, including the climate crisis, massive inequality, horrific child abuse and neglect, and failing democracies where the average voice does not matter. It also reinforced a fallacy, the constitutive fallacy, that we can abstractly derive just systems without going upstream, to the norms that account for the first creation of social relations. In doing so it gutted the possibility of consensual governance, or freedom from the power of others (or most accurately, relative self-determination).

    Several childrens hands placed together in a supportive gesture over a wooden surface, with text reading, The most powerful social justice is a fair start in life. Join the coalition. Logo and Having Kids appear at the bottom.

    The Fair Start movement was designed to correct that mistake, and promote child-focused and ecosocial Fair Start family planning centered around parental readiness, collective planning to ensure birth equity and a level playing field for all kids, and a universal ethic of more sustainable families. That is the correct interpretation of Article 16.

    Fair Start is the first and overriding human right – the one on which all other rights depend – and it is the genesis of freedom. We can achieve a just transition towards by incentivizing better family planning though taking the resources from the concentrations of power that created and benefited from the crises we face today. Why? Because we first physically constitute just communities by limiting and decentralizing power, and future children have a right to those resources. That – a just claim to family planning incentives as future child entitlements – is the key to qualitative optimal world populations / democratic communities.

    A comparison chart contrasts “Current Family Planning” with “Fair Start Family Planning,” highlighting differences in welfare, opportunity, and environmental protection for children, using bolded text and underlining for emphasis.

    Fulfilling that claim means liberating the most numerous and vulnerable entities in the moral universe – those that will live in the future. Nothing has a greater impact in comprehensively maximizing social justice, and ensuring the transition involves a struggle between free people who promote Fair Start and fundamental justice, and preconstitutional people, or precons, who do not. We can tell the difference between the two by simply asking a few questions.

  • A True Independence Day? Watch Fair Start in Action

    A True Independence Day? Watch Fair Start in Action

    While a lot of people celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and beer, some are asking what it truly means to be free, and how to create a world that ensures that freedom for all with equal opportunity, a meaningful role in more effective and participatory democracies, and the freedom from others – and the climate crisis – that we find in nature or the nonhuman world. That sort of freedom is what human rights and consensual governance looks like, and we get there by ensuring an equitable start in life for everyone. Fair Start family planning creates an actual social contract that works, and nothing has a greater impact on the crises we face today.

    Enter Cassie King and Matt Webber. Cassie and Matt are exemplifying what it would mean to constitute communities that are actually free, in part by compensating future generations for the harm we have caused them through the climate, inequity and other ecosocial crises.

    Cassie, an activist and nonprofit professional said this about family planning:

    Current corrupt concentrations of power push a growth model that promotes unsustainable family planning policies. They see us ordinary people as economic inputs in their machine, to use for our reproductive and other labor. It’s our job to fight that narrative and elevate the worth of every individual to have their basic needs met, on day one. My partner and I hope to adopt children one day and I feel the urgency to ensure that my future child, and all children, have the resources and opportunities that are their right.

    Matt, a donor to the Fair Start Movement, said this:

    I support the Fair Start Movement because I know that any claims I have to property and wealth are subject to ensuring every child a fair and equitable start in life, the first and overriding human right. I’m willing to step forward, as a donor, and say that. I challenge others to do the same.

    Together, they are exemplifying a real new deal, one that fixes the fundamental source of the biggest problems in the world today, and leads to a comprehensively liberated state of affairs. It’s not about population. It’s about people, the vast majority of people, who will exist in the future. It’s about putting their interests first. And if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to plan for a child.

    Government derives from the people which derive from their creation. A just creation norm thus precedes and overrides everything else, including the government assigned property rights that have created massive power differentials between rich and poor. Free people will further this truth; precons, or those opposed to just and free communities, will oppose it. Cassie and Matt are engaging in the discourse of decolonization, of physically constituting justifiable and consensual communities of free and equal people. Cassie and Matt are exemplifying what it means to change power structures, and demand justice, at the most fundamental level. They are echoing the spirit of people fighting for freedom in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a suit that treats the government’s failure to respond to the climate crisis as a grave violation of our right to be free in nature from the power of others.

    Forget the idea that the borders of human power are lines on a globe. Cassie and Matt are living the truth: The borders of human power that really matter are the conditions in which we are born, and the nexus of our communities with the nonhuman world. Those are the borders where our most basic values align. We were not constituted by god-like founders and ancient constitutions from the past. To constitute just societies means to limit and decentralize human power, first and foremost through the actual constituents – the “We the people.” In other words, we constitute just communities through Fair Start family planning – changing our polities/economies into legalities, and Cassie and Matt are leading the way.

    We maximize autonomy by doing equity upfront – birth equity, in the fullest sense of the concept, including one’s share of democratic rulemaking authority. We don’t maximize it by continuing to pretend the inherently interpersonal act of creating children is an act of autonomy, and then chasing equity through invasive and ineffective measures downstream and later in life.

    We can spread this modeling, and this simple discourse: “Part of your wealth is my and my future child’s family planning entitlement and incentive.”

    The rich and powerful hold their privileged positions because of a racist, colonizing and ecocidal family planning model that exploited future generations and the nonhuman world to create wealth for a small group of people. These people hold their power over others because men with guns are there to defend it – not because it is just. Fair Start is our justified demand to limit and decentralize that power using a zero baseline baseline for distribution, in favor of democratically empowering future generations.

    TAKE ACTION:

    Speak truth to power. Help us approach and engage these five people who together well represent concentrations of public and private power, and the intergenerational injustice that created it.

    Ivanka Trump – daughter of Donald Trump. Contact her and her followers here.

    Hunter Biden – son of Joe Biden. Contact him here. Contact him via his spouse, here.

    Mr. Pedro G. de Oliveira Guterres – son of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Contact him here.

    John T. Raymond – son of oil magnate Lee Raymond. Contact him here.

    Elon Musk, who is a perfect example of our unjust family planning system and someone who also continues to promote it as a means of enriching himself. Contact him via his partner Grimes.

    These people hold privileged positions, in derogation of true democracy. They are uniquely situated to promote Fair Start as the best means to compensate future generations for the harms we have caused them. They can lead by example, like Cassie and Matt, and in being willing to support birth equity can show how to put people over property. We have a right to the resources at the top (including the platforms of influence privileged people have to communicate) to further Fair Start – the first and overriding human right.

    If Matt and Cassie can work to change the paradigm away from the isolationist family planning model that helped create the ecosocial crises we face today, so can these five high influencers.

    Join us in urging them to do so.

  • Fair Start Coalitions Are Growing. Join the Movement

    Fair Start Coalitions Are Growing. Join the Movement

    Do you support the simple ideas that 1) parents should be ready before they have kids, 2) that we have a right to distribute resources to give all kids an eco-social Fair Start in life, and that 3) a universal ethic of sustainable families for all is the best way to restore nature? Peer-reviewed research shows that prioritizing these elements in policy has ten to twenty times the positive impact on climate and other crises, relative to most other changes we can make.

    Dozens of groups from the child protection, animal welfare, environmental protection, human rights and democracy sectors are joining various coalitions that further some version of the Fair Start core suite of ideals. Groups like WildEarth Guardians, World Population Balance, ProVeg International, Brighter Green, Population Matters, and Seeding Sovereignty are working on campaigns – from leaning on Joe Biden to issue a declaration of climate emergency based on a -300ppm standard, to supporting litigation in the United States that requires ecocentric (300 ppm or less) solutions to the climate crisis as a constitutional right. These campaigns each help further every child’s fundamental human right to an eco-social Fair Start in life.

    Take Action:

    Will the organizations you support join as well? Urge them to reach out to us at info@fairstartmovement.org to learn more!

  • The Fair Start Movement is Here

    The Fair Start Movement is Here

    After five years of research and evolution, we are excited to announce that HavingKids is becoming the Fair Start Movement. This comes from the input of many voices from diverse and intersectional areas in advocacy, as the organization pivots to more of a collective structure increasingly led by identities with more at stake. 

    The Fair Start Movement is a collective of parents and young people, child advocates, activists, health practitioners, social scientists, ethicists, and institutions from a range of causes who come together to advance Fair Start efforts at the state, federal, and global level. 

    Several hands of different skin tones are stacked together. Overlaid text reads, The most powerful social justice is a fair start in life. Join the coalition. The Fair Start Movement logo appears at the bottom.

    We advocate for informed, inclusive policies rather than ones focused on short-term and unsustainable economic growth with damaging ecological consequences. We call on those with a platform to speak out, from celebrities to those in governance. We also build our movement through a growing coalition of organizations. But most importantly, we empower young people and parents to share their stories and force accountability from those who oppose giving kids a fair start and threaten our and our children’s future.

    Child-first collective family planning, beyond the isolation of “nobody else’s business” is happening. Most people maintain a taboo against talking about collective family planning because they fear the top-down power of the state. The reality is that we perceive the state as a threat, which in a democracy makes no sense, because of our failure to implement Fair Start or comparably inclusive family planning models.

    Our focus remains on work with the greatest long-run impact on the crises we face today: Rights-based Fair Start reproductive justice reforms that override all competing interests. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to plan for one. Our interventions are built around three pillars: 1) fertility delay and parental readiness, 2) distribution of resources geared around birth equity, and 3) a universal ethic of sustainable families.

    A comparison chart of Current Family Planning vs. Fair Start Family Planning. The left side lists negatives of current planning; the right side highlights positive outcomes of fair start planning for welfare, equality, and environmental protection.
    Better family planning has the greatest impact on the crises we face today.

    We remain committed to our 2021 plans of action, including: 

    Plans for our first peaceful demonstration as the Fair Start Movement demanding that Exxon officials, past and present, publicly acknowledge their obligations to compensate future generations against a zero baseline, given the climatological harm they have caused. They are obligated to right that wrong by funding climate restorative projects to ensure all kids an ecosocial fair start in life, a moral fact we are also urging the UN to institutionalize through correct interpretation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s time for both governments and big business to stop working together to exploit future generations. Fair Start is the first and overriding human right, superseding the property rights of those who have harmed future generations, and who must compensate them through Fair Start and other effective mechanisms.

    Join the coalition as an organization or sign up to follow the latest opportunities to take action.