15 March 2011
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is the world’s largest regional security organization whose 55 participating States span the geographical area from Vancouver to Vladivostok. It has as one of its three main activities the protection of democracy and human rights. (More detail of the background to the organisation is included in the report of the 2005 meeting. EHF and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights The OSCE Office for… read more »
14 March 2011
The EHF takes a full part in the civil society Platform of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (which was created in February 2007 out of the former European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia). 14 April 2011: Board Member Hans Christian Cars represented EHF at the meeting of the Fundamental Rights Agency with its NGO Platform on 14 April 2011. There were over 200 participants. The plenary sessions dealt with issues concerning homophobia, asylum, the Roma,… read more »
3 March 2011
Humanism is an outlook inherent in our very lives as men and women living together in communities. Elements of humanist beliefs are found throughout history in all parts of the world – in the teachings of Confucius, for example. The most fundamental ethical principle – the Golden Rule or ‘do as you would be done by’ – is first found in Egypt almost 4,000 years go, and it re-appears in almost every religious and ethical… read more »
At their World Congress in 2002, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation, the International Humanist and Ethical Union adopted the following statement on the nature of Humanism, which the EHF has endorsed: Humanism is the outcome of a long tradition of free thought that has inspired many of the world’s great thinkers and creative artists and gave rise to science itself. The fundamentals of modern Humanism are as follows: Humanism is ethical. It… read more »
2 March 2011
The chair of the European Parliamentary Platform for Secularism in Politics, Sophie in’t Veld MEP, has written to the President of the Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, to protest at his invitation to the Pope to address a plenary session of the Parliament. She makes the point of her complaint that “It is wholly inappropriate for plenary meetings to be used as a podium for religious messages”, drawing a distinction between plenary sessions of the Parliament and the… read more »