New Family fills a crucial gap in the theory and practice of law and human rights

New Family fills a crucial gap in the theory and practice of law and human rights, by working for equal family rights for all residents of Israel, including the rights to marry, divorce, have children, register spouses and children, and conduct family life regardless of religion, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, or status.

Since 1998, New Family has distinguished itself as the leading family rights advocates in Israel. In over a decade of activist litigation, New Family has set ground-breaking legal precedents in recognition of rights to equality in common-law partnerships, reproductive freedoms, maternity and parenting benefits, adoption, surrogacy, finance, inheritance, survivors benefits, and more, triggering a dramatic transformation of the legal and social reality in Israel.

New Family serves all families in Israel subject to legal inequalities resulting from religious jurisdiction over personal status and family life in Israel, including people who can’t marry in Israel their chosen partner or can’t marry at all in Israel, immigrants, single-parent families, common-law couples, minorities, LGBT, Reform, Conservative and other non-Orthodox Jews, converts, interfaith families, bi-national families, religiously ‘forbidden’ unions, migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers, people who don’t meet the religious definition of any faith, or meet the definition of two faiths, and their children.

New Family’s Goals:

• Recognition of the fundamental right to establish a family in Israel.

• Legislating Israel’s equivalent to constitutional protection for family rights in the form of a Basic Law on the Family that recognizes and protects all types of families.

• Achieving legal equality for all families in Israel.

• Raising public consciousness of family status and rights and of the plight of unconventional families in Israel.

• Leading the struggle against violations of human rights in the family.

• Achieving recognition of the family as a financially independent entity-a fourth sector in the economy.

New Family is led by Advocate Irit Rosenblum, New Family’s founder and executive director. Irit Rosenblum identified a critical gap in law and human rights-the sphere of family. She broke new ground by pioneering the development of family human rights law in Israel and globally. Rosenblum convened a team of 30 lawyers and social scientists to found New Family in 1998. She is a respected jurist and legal innovator and the recipient of multiple distinctions. Rosenblum heads a team of multi-lingual attorneys who provide unique legal expertise and experience on issues that only New Family specializes in in Israel. She leverages the skills volunteered byNew Family’s board of directors and volunteer attorneys, who contribute time and expertise in various capacities. New Family’s work is based on authoritative research on family trends that used by academics, social scientists, legislators and government officials.

In the belief that parenting is a human right, Rosenblum litigated legal precedents that could serve as global examples of egalitarian reproductive policy. To attain the right for every individual to establish a family, she cultivated a new realm of medical, legal and social possibilities by advocating use of IVF, artificial insemination, surrogacy, freezing ova, and posthumous sperm retrieval for those who otherwise can’t have children. By generating systemic legal changes, raising public consciousness and changing attitudes, she enabled people to have children in ways that were inconceivable and legally impossible a decade ago. She was the first to articulate a right to biological continuity and promote the right to leave a biological legacy in case of premature death through the establishment of the world’s first and only Biological Will Center.

New Family is proud of our wide public reach and visibility. In 2010, we served 17,000 families from across the social spectrum. Over 25,000 unique visitors enter our online family rights information center each month. It has been viewed 2 million times since it was launched!

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