The great thing about General Assemblies is the chance to meet one another again after a year of hard work in our respective Member Organisations (MOs). Of course we have to discuss the administrative items, the financial reports and the bylaws, and nobody denies that they are important, but an IHEU General Assembly (GA) is always just a little bit more!

In this issue a number of writers examine how secularism is interpreted and implemented in their countries. Obviously, there are different traditions. The USA has one kind of secularism built into its constitution, and yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most religious countries in the developed world. France also has a fiercely defended laicité that is still under constant attack.

Around 100 participants came from around the globe to IHEU’s first “World Conference on Untouchability” to share successful strategies to combat a problem they described as “the most widespread, pernicious and intractable form of discrimination on Earth.” The conference, held in London’s Conway Hall Humanist Centre on June 9 and 10, brought together politicians, academics and grassroot

I am very honoured to have been invited to speak at the World Conference on Untouchability, and to add my congratulations to the IHEU for highlighting an issue which affects 250 million people, mainly in the Indian subcontinent but as you have noted, Mr President, also in Nigeria, Yemen, Gambia, Japan, and Korea.

India became a nation under the British regime after 400 years of Mughal rule. Despite many changes during this long period, one unchanging phenomenon was caste discrimination.

Bangladesh embodies a combination of Bengali society and culture, a Hindu and Buddhist heritage and later Muslim traditions. The caste system and prejudice against “untouchables” are part of Hindu culture. Although Hindu in origin, work-based discrimination and social exclusion have been a reality in both the Hindu minority and the Muslim majority communities in Bangladesh.

If this conference had been held 300 years ago, nobody from my continent would have attended, and if ever such a person set foot on the shores of this country, he or she was on their way to the “New World”, victim of the international slave trade and of racism that accorded black people inferior and untouchable status.

The term buraku literally refers to a small, generally rural, hamlet. Burakumin are a Japanese social minority group: Japan’s “invisible race.” No physical characteristics distinguish them, unlike other main minority groups, from the majority population. There are about six million burakumin in modern Japan (about 2 per cent of the population).

In May this year, a Commission under Justice Sean Ryan reported to the Irish Government on the wide-scale abuse of children in Irish institutions over a very long period.

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau). This is a fact: Freedom is not universally respected, even in western countries. All the governments – not only in so-called “Muslim” countries – that currently oppose human rights in the name of “cultural diversity” are also against any separation of religions and the state.