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Three Years of Blogging, a Lifetime of Affection: The Right to Family as a Place of Belonging

 

Three Years of Blogging, a Lifetime of Affection:
The Right to Family as a Place of Belonging


By Joana Capaz Coelho


Today, this blog turns three — on my Mother's birthday. Three years of writing, sharing, and reflecting. Of carefully chosen, hesitant, heartfelt words. Three years of trying to reconcile what drives me in Law with what moves me in life.

This text is, therefore, both a celebration and a tribute. A celebration of this space that keeps growing with me — and a tribute to my Mother. Speaking about her is difficult without my voice breaking. Perhaps because it was through her that I first understood — without yet knowing — what the Right to Family means. And I don’t mean the cold letter of the law, but the lived reality of having someone who cares, who welcomes, who stays.

Over these three years, I have written about human rights, health, gender equality, and solidarity. But I always return to the same root: the right to have someone. To have someone who supports us, listens to us, calls us by our name. I always return to the Right to Family — a right that is more than biology, more than bureaucracy, more than any official document. The Right to Family is the right to belong, to care, and to be cared for.

This right is not merely an ideal: it is enshrined in human rights instruments. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in Article 16(3), states that: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State”[1]. Likewise, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in Article 8, establishes the right to respect for private and family life, imposing not only a duty on States to abstain from arbitrary interference, but also positive obligations to protect family life[2]. In Portugal, the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic (CRP) identifies family protection as a fundamental task of the State (Article 67), recognising the family’s structuring role in social organisation[3]. The family — in all its diverse forms — is understood as a space for personal fulfilment, solidarity, and affection: values the law must safeguard.

This recognition of the right to family is far from isolated. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (Article 23)[4], the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Articles 9 and 16)[5], and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU) (Articles 7 and 33)[6] all affirm the family as an essential space of protection, affection, and stability. International law has increasingly consolidated the idea that family — in all its forms — deserves effective protection.

Still, the way Law recognises and regulates family does not always reflect the diversity and complexity of real family experiences. The challenge remains: to ensure that legal protection goes beyond an abstract notion of “family” and materialises in concrete measures that uphold the dignity and well-being of all individuals.

My mother is gone. But she left me with the certainty that love is also structure. It is also norm. It is also resistance. From that certainty — learned through her gestures, her example, her presence — I understand more deeply today what is truly at stake when we speak of the Right to Family. I speak of all that the law has yet to do to ensure that no one is deprived of loving, of caring, and of being cared for. I speak of a legal system that recognises the centrality of affection, that values human relationships, that protects vulnerability and celebrates diversity.

As Pope Francis so beautifully said, “The family is the place of encounter, of sharing, of going forth from ourselves in order to welcome others and stand beside them. The family is the first place where we learn to love. We must never forget that the family is the first place where we learn to love” (homily of June 25, 2022)[7]. In that sentence lies much of what I write here: the right to family is not merely a legal right — it is, above all, a lived right. A right to presence, to care, to the kind of love that grounds and transforms us.

My Mother was my first place of belonging. But she did not walk that path alone with me. My Father — a steady and loving presence — has always been my greatest example and safe harbour. From him I learned that caring also means listening, and that love can be the quiet support that sustains. My siblings, Filipa and Martim, are an extension of my foundation — companions in life, in struggle, and in memory. We are made of the same affections, the same language of care. And on the hardest days, they remind me of who I am and where I come from.

I also carry with me — in my blood, in my memory, in my gestures — the strength of my family, who helped me grow and resist, who taught me to care, to fight, and to remain. May others find, as I did, that place of belonging that the Law must protect.


[6] CFREU: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf (consulted at: 16/06/2025).

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