31 October 2007
This letter was sent in October 2007 to Ambassador Christian Strohal, Director of the OSCE Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. A reply, dated 11 March 2008, is reproduced below. Your Excellency, For three years running a delegation of the European Humanist Federation has attended the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw and participated actively in the sessions on Freedom of Religion and Belief and on Intolerance and Discrimination. We have also held… read more »
10 October 2007
October 2007 meeting of Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics Georges Liénard and Jenoff van Hulle attended this meeting on behalf of EHF. The invited speakers were Andrew Duff MEP and Baron Crespo MEP, representatives of the European Parliament at the IGC negotiations. Baron Crespo underlined that no changes were made in the new Reform Treaty concerning the position of and dialogue with religions and non-confessional organisations, except that Article 52 has moved… read more »
9 October 2007
The EHF submitted the following recommendation to the OSCE Chairmanship Conference on Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: The EHF is concerned with the tendency to identify people on the basis of their religion or (non-) belief as this creates fictitious barriers among citizens and facilitates manipulation by unscrupulous religious and political leaders. Besides, such identification on the basis of religion and (non-) belief stems from an inadequate awareness of such tenets of democracy as pluralism… read more »
4 October 2007
This conference – known as the ‘3Is’ Conference: International, Intercultural and ‘Interconvictional’ – was held in Strasbourg, France, on Wednesday October 3 (at the Marc Bloch University) and Thursday October 4 2007 (at the Council of Europe). It was organised jointly by EHF with the Cercle Gaston Crémieux (a Jewish cultural association), the Ligue Internationale de l’Enseignement de l’Éducation et de la Culture, the Manifeste des Libertés (a Muslim cultural association) and the Réseau Européen… read more »
International Intercultural Interconvictional colloquium “Social cohesion in a multicultural Europe: role and impact of currents of thought and religions” Strasbourg, Council of Europe 3 and 4 October 2007 If the diversity of cultures and religious or philosophical convictions might prove to be a cause of social disruption, as unfortunately current events remind us of this periodically, it is not less true that this diversity might also contribute to the social cohesion should certain conditions –… read more »