According to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, European policies of multiculturalism have “utterly failed”. Certainly, when intolerance and discrimination are allowed to thrive in the name of multiculturalism, something has gone seriously wrong. According to IHEU representative Roy Brown, speaking in reply to the presentation of a report to the Human Rights Council on contemporary forms of racism, turning a blind eye to the oppression of women in Europe’s minority communities is itself a form of racism.

The 57 Islamic States and their allies have for several years been pushing the Human Rights Council to tighten international law on freedom of expression by introducing “complementary standards” needed, they claim, to combat new abuses of freedom of expression such as “Islamophobia”. Yet in many Islamic States incitement to religious hatred is allowed to go unchallenged.

IHEU representative Hannah Bock raised two examples of traditional practices that are continuing to impede efforts to reduce maternal mortality: child marriage in Afghanistan and the forced feeding of young girls in Mauritania.

Humanists have expressed their outrage at a call to “get rid” of gays in Ghana. Paul Evans Aidoo, the government minister for the Western Region of Ghana, reportedly told the Joy FM radio station in Accra that: "All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in society."  Aidoo, a devout Roman Catholic, went on to call for the Bureau of National Investigations to round up all gays and called on landlords and tenants to inform on people they suspect of being homosexual. "Once they have been arrested, they will be brought before the law.”

DeMens.nu, the umbrella organisation of Humanist member associations in Flanders and Brussels, has created the world’s first University Chair for the ‘Dignified End-of-life’. The new chair is part of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). It will address all the issues surrounding the end of life, without prejudice against options such as euthanasia.

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) has condemned plans by members of the Ugandan Parliament to fast track legislation that would mandate execution for a wide range of consensual gay relationships. GALHA, an IHEU member organization based in the UK, has joined demands by the international community that Uganda's President Museveni veto the "Kill The Gays" bill, should it be passed in Parliament.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has called on the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) to work for the abolition of blasphemy laws throughout the continent. Speaking on Saturday, April 30th, at the 49th session of the ACHPR in Banjul, The Gambia, IHEU representative Leo Igwe said that blasphemy laws “justify and sanctify tyranny, hatred, intolerance, forced conversion, intimidation and violence.”

In October 2010, the UN Human Rights Council working group on the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action held a two-week workshop which discussed, inter alia, “structural discrimination”. The report of that workshop was presented to the plenary of the Human Rights Council on 22 March 2011. Strangely, the report contained no mention of what is unquestionably the most widespread, pernicious and deeply-rooted example of structural discrimination on Earth: I refer of course to the caste system.

In a morning-long debate on traditional values at the Human Rights Council on Tuesday 22 March 2011, the Pakistani delegate, speaking on behalf of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was allowed by the president to overrun his allotted three minute by a further seven in order to express his outrage at an incident reported just that morning. Was it the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Damascus? No. The killing of peaceful demonstrators in Yemen or Bahrain? No. His diatribe was against the burning of a copy of the Quran in Florida.

In what looks like a major climb down on the part of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) this grouping of the 57 Islamic states in the UN has tabled a draft resolution at the Human Rights Council: “Combating intolerance …and violence based on religion or belief”.