The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has welcomed the Council of Europe’s move to include Humanist organizations in international dialogues that were previously restricted to religious groups.

It was in 2007, at a meeting of the Council of Europe in San Marino, that I first had the opportunity to say to an audience that it might be able to do something about the fact that organised religion was a major threat to human rights.

IHEU has had institutional relations with the Council of Europe (CoE) since 1954 and is entitled to launch collective complaints at the European court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

IHEU has followed up its presentation to the Council of Europe’s San Marino conference “The religious dimension of intercultural dialogue” with a massive written submission containing 40 specific recommendations. The paper was prepared in conjunction with the UK National Secular Society. It is also available in the original form, complete with contents and footnotes, as a PDF file for download below.

The European Council Committee on Culture, Science and Education has rejected a draft report saying that “creationism” and its biblically rooted Christian worldview represent a threat to human freedom and must be suppressed. The Committee in its declaration said that freedom of thought and discussion was a “fundamental value.”

IHEU member organization Libre Penséé has issued a statement on the Berlin Declaration, which was signed on 25 March 2007 by Hans-Gert Pöttering as President of the European Parliament, Angela Merkel as President of the Council of the European Union (and the European Council) and José Manuel Durão Barroso as President of the European Commission.

The Council of Europe has come down on the side of free expression after it rejected calls from religious groups to introduce new legislation to protect them from insult and offence. IHEU member organization The National Secular Society was prominent at a seminar in which the Council of Europe gathered evidence for its report.

Around 400 International NGOs (INGOs) have participatory status with the Council of Europe (CoE), and these NGOs constitute the 'Conference of INGOs of the Council of Europe', one of the four pillars of the CoE.

The aims of the visit were to get to know better the workings of the INGOs in the Council of Europe, to find out how our organisation can contribute more to these workings, and to underline that we as humanists find the structure and workings important.

The Council of Europe