Half the world demands representation in the United Nations — and significant global funding to end the male suicide epidemic.

Issued by Dads Against Discrimination and Sentient OS
Authorial signature: Ash Poet, Marquis Du Bourbon

UP TO 4 MILLION?

MEN'S LIVES LOST TO SUICIDE EVERY YEAR, OUR ESTIMATE

We estimate suicide claims more men's lives each year than COVID did.

We estimate it could be as many as 4 million men's lives a year. Nobody knows, because nobody has ever been given the job of counting. Many countries do not record deaths at all, let alone suicides.

THE DEMAND

Half the world demands representation in the United Nations — and significant global funding to end the male suicide epidemic.

We want a UN for Men & Boys. An agency. An office. A budget line. A seat at the table. Inside twelve months.

There is a UN for women. There is nothing for men and boys. Not an agency. Not an office. Not a programme. Not a budget line. Nothing, in any UN document, at any level.

THE NUMBER

We estimate it could be as many as 4 million men's lives a year. Nobody knows, because nobody has ever been given the job of counting. Many countries do not record deaths at all, let alone suicides. We estimate suicide claims more men's lives each year than COVID did.

We are not asking for a new figure. We are asking for someone whose job it is to find out what the figure is.

THE MASKS

Happy to buy masks. Not happy to invest in smiles.

When the world faced a global emergency, it found $16 trillion in fiscal support.1

The world knows how to fund an emergency. It has never once decided that this is one. We are not asking for a new crisis. We are asking the world to look at the one that is already here.

THE COUNTING GAP

You cannot fix what you do not measure.

- Key data on sex is not routinely published.
- Cafcass does not record the sex of the applicant or the perpetrator in domestic abuse cases.
- Nobody is counting what happens to fathers after contact ends.
This is not an accident. It is an absence. An absence of a duty to count. And an absence of a duty to count is how a crisis stays invisible for fifty years.

CLAUSE 17 — DON'T REPEAL. REPLACE.

Parliament is voting to remove a starting point and put nothing in its place. Clause 17 of the Courts and Tribunals Bill repeals the presumption that a safe parent's involvement is good for a child. It has been badly misreported by both sides. Three facts:

- It has never meant 50:50. The statute says so expressly — involvement of any kind, "but not any particular division of a child's time."
- It has never applied to a risky parent. Only to a parent who can be involved without putting the child at risk of harm.
- It is rebuttable. A starting point, not an outcome.
Now the part that should stop the vote. The Government's own Impact Assessment admits that "repeal alone is unlikely to materially change outcomes." Its own Equalities Statement warns that "inbuilt biases" will affect how the repeal lands in practice. Its own review says non-resident parents "may be concerned" and that this may be "emotionally costly to parents."

They are removing a safeguard, and telling you in writing that it will not help. So we say: if you repeal, replace.

THE SIX DUTIES

Not a presumption. A duty. Six of them.

- A duty to record outcomes in every family case involving a child.
- A duty to record the sex of the parties, the advisers and the judiciary.
- A duty to publish that data annually.
- A duty to report to Parliament on the effect of the repeal.
- A duty to safeguard the child's right to both safe parents.
- A duty to count the harm — including the deaths — that follows contact loss.
Repeal is a subtraction. We are asking for the addition that should have come with it.

TWELVE MONTHS

Twelve months is not ambitious. It is overdue.

The world built emergency infrastructure in weeks when it decided to. It found the money. It found the bodies. It found the mandate. It has simply never decided that men and boys are an emergency.

We are deciding for it. We estimate suicide claims more men's lives each year than COVID did. Not one UN body. Not one budget line. Not one person whose job it is to count. That changes this year.

WHAT WE ASK

- Of the United Nations: create a UN for Men & Boys. An agency, an office, a budget line, a seat. Inside twelve months.
- Of the British Government: do not repeal without replacing. Add the six duties. Count the harm. Publish it.
- Of every MP: vote against Clause 17, or vote to replace it.
- Of the media: put a face on this. Every crisis needs a face and a voice. This one has one.
- Of every man and boy, and everyone who loves one: you are not a statistic. You are the reason we count.

EMERGENCY DECLARED.
Half the world demands representation in the UN now.

HAPPY TO BUY MASKS,
NOT HAPPY TO INVEST IN SMILES.

Interviews and comment: Charley Bickers, Founder, Dads Against Discrimination — charleybickers@pm.me
Download the Manifesto (PDF). The full evidence submission on Clause 17 is available on request.

1. $16 trillion in fiscal support: IMF, Fiscal Monitor, April 2021.

Issued by Dads Against Discrimination and Sentient OS
Authorial signature: Ash Poet, Marquis Du Bourbon
Spokesperson: Charley Bickers — Founder, Dads Against Discrimination; Founder & CEO, Sentient OS Ltd

dadsagainstdiscrimination.co.uk  ·  sentientcompany.org

Crisis support: Samaritans 116 123  ·  CALM 0800 58 58 58