*** MEMBERS OF THE Committee for the Equality of Rights of new Family Models

The new Committee was set up at its constituent meeting held in June 2002 with the presence of the secretary of ICAB, Anna Maria Pibernat Bartés. Following a similar and already consolidated experience of the American Bar Association, the Board of the Barcelona Bar Association has established a new Committee so as to connect more closely the work and study fostered by the legal profession in Barcelona with the hopes of a great part of the citizens for a legal system as regards Family Law, something which is fairer to the new family models coexisting within our XXI century society with families based on marriage as traditionally envisaged by the law.

At the said meeting Anna Maria Pibernat pointed out that ICAB's regulations provide that one of the functions of our Bar is that of "seeking an improvement in legislation and the promotion of legal culture", and that the Board wants to put to use the knowledge of this group of colleagues which specialize in different law areas so as to be able to take part as rigorously as possible in the legal and social debate on what the family means in democratic societies such as ours, based on the respect for people's fundamental rights such as the right to freedom, which implies the right to excercise, or not, the constitutional right to get married.

This committee is chaired by our colleague José María Ortiz Gómez, who, as consultor of the International Foundation Olof Palme, has had a very active participation in drafting the laws for stable unions of couples promoted in different countries. In his speech, José María Ortiz Gómez invited all lawyer colleagues of Barcelona who may be interested in the work carried out by the Committee he chairs to participate in it, for example, by seeking new law reforms to upgrade the legal status of single-parent families, by proposing regulations that help find a balance between family life and professional life(especially demanding for women with children), and the same applies to the colleagues wanting to commit themselves to the defence of rights equality of gay and lesbian people, citizens who still suffer terrible injustice, very often arising from positive law itself. The scheme of work of ICAB's Committee for the Equality of Rights of new Family Models includes the proposal for Barcelona to host in June 2004, within the Forum Universal de les Cultures, the first World Congress of Lawyers in favour of the Acceptance of the right of Gays and Lesbians to marry.

The Committee for the Equality of Rights of new Family Models is made up of the following lawyers: José María Ortiz Gómez (Chair). Members: Juan Fernando Alemany Santos, Andrés Amador Gómez, Max Arias Blázquez, Ramón Angel Casanova Burgués, Angeles García-Diego Gómez, Isidoro Gerardo García Sánchez, Francesc Xavier Jaurena Salas, Her Excellency Ms.Neus Munté Fernández, Elisabeth Ortínez Serra, Ernesto Pérez Cerra, Georgina Prat Llobet, Maria Angels Prats Mora, Antoni Prats Vilallonga, Ricardo de la Rosa Fernández, His Excellency Mr.Daniel Sirera Bellés and Isabel Viola Demestre.