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About me

parf_rhod4First, a formal introduction is in order: Pavel Parfentiev, CEO of the FamilyPolicy.Ru Advocacy Group, Chairman of the For Family Rights NGO (Russia), independent family policy expert and social activist from Russia. Member of the 2012 Global Home Education Conference (GHEC 2012) Advisory Board.

In 2013-2021 collaborated with World Congress of Families, acted as NGO’s Ambassador to the European Institutions, Advisor for the International Human Rights Law and the expert for the Russian Constitutional, Civil and Family Law.

Now, with the formalities over, I’d like to say that it is my deeply held conviction that the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman, is the core of any society, and is fundamental to its development and prosperity. Its security and well-being is in many respects more important than matters of economy, geopolitics, government, etc. that are constantly in the spotlight. Where the family is strong and healthy, there are no insoluble problems and no incurable ailments in the society. Therefore, protecting family, marriage and parental rights means securing the future.

Moreover, I am firmly convinced that just and beneficial laws are based on what in centuries before philosophers called the natural law. Natural law follows from the true nature of man and society itself, so that any violation of it is both inhuman and unnatural. It was on the natural law that those norms of international law that are truly universal were based on, and it is this aspect that sets them apart from those artificially installed under the influence of various dubious ideologies.

It is also my conviction that the natural family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, the right to life from conception to natural death, recognition of natural parental rights (including the right to choose their children’s education), and freedom of religion are central to universal human rights. Ideologically motivated attacks on these core principles threaten the whole human rights framework and, in the long run, peace and stability of mankind. Nowadays, in some ways this poses an even greater threat than that of other destructive ideologies, such as racism or Nazism, whose nature humankind already learned the hard way.

Therefore I regard the widening local and international effort to protect these fundamental values as the most important human rights movement of our time, and hope that civil society in my own country, Russia, will further raise its voice in its support.

Apart from this, I devote my time to independent historical research, having published a number of academic books and articles both in Russia and abroad, conduct research in cultural anthropology, history and philosophy of law. As an independent legal practitioner I often offer my expertise to help protect violated family – parents’ and children’s – rights in Russia. A practicing Roman Catholic.