Speakers and delegates came from all corners of the world to share information about the issues they face at home, thus providing a comprehensive overview of the global challenges to be faced in IYF94, and an appreciation of the many cultural and traditional mores at work. It opened with an appeal from the ICW president, Lily Boeykins, for the conference to look at the role of fathers in a new light. Yet again, she said, this indicated the old view that children were only a woman's responsibility. She claimed policy makers had ignored the role of the father and it was time that men were made part of the family again.
Parental tasks have to be redistributed as the income-earning role now belongs to both partners.
Henryk Sokalski, the IYF94 coordinator, spoke about the opportunities in 1994 to promote women's rights and a more egalitarian family life. The main goal, he said, was to encourage governments to develop policies and programs that would last beyond the rhetoric of IYF94. With such a base for children to learn from, families may cease to be patriarchal and violent, as they still are in many countries. Sokalski argued that inter- dependencies define family life and so family policies must foster new roles for men. Ms Sellami-Meslem, the Director of the UN Division for the Advancement of Women and an outspoken feminist from Algeria, called for positive action in IYF94 to ensure that the rights of women were shored up by expanding the positive role of men and fathers in the family.