Concordats are agreements between sovereign states and the Roman Catholic Church. A new web site, Concordat Watch keeps track of these agreements and includes a detailed explanation of the background to concordats.

The IHEU General Assembly 2008 will be held in Washington, DC, USA, in conjunction with the 2008 Congress, on Thursday 5th June (9.30 am to 5.30 pm) and Sunday 8th June 2008 (2.30 pm to 5.30 pm). Forms to register for the General Assembly, make nominations to fill the two Vice-President vacancies on the IHEU Executive Committee and propose resolutions for the GA and/or the Congress are available here.

Fritanke.no, the newspaper of the Norwegian Humanist Association has announced that selected articles from its Norwegian edition will also be available in English. The English language articles can be found at http://www.fritanke.no/ENGLISH/ The first two articles on the site relate to the important developments and arrangements made by a joint National Assembly relating to the State-Church relation in Norway.

At the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Tuesday, 15 April, states belonging to the Organisation of Islamic Conference demanded that Holland prosecute one of its MPs for "defamation of religion". The very next day, 16 April 2008, Keith Porteous Wood raised the alarm about the threats these nations are posing to freedom of expression in a speech in Brussels attended by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

The Secular Coalition for America has announced a Lobby Day to follow the 2008 World Humanist Congress. The Lobby Day will be an ideal opportunity for U.S. citizens to influence their elected representatives.

The European Humanist Federation has written to the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, to ask whether the European Union will now consult its member states and allies with a view to withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, in the light of the Council's recent decision to change the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression.

A year after the world was stunned by images of a 17-year-old girl being stoned to death in Iraqi Kurdistan, an international panel will debate the rise of honour killings, violence against women, gender apartheid and political Islam in Kurdistan/Iraq and the Middle East. High-profile speakers will include women’s rights activists, academics and experts from Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Sweden, New Zealand and Britain.

For the past eleven years the organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), representing the 57 Islamic States, has been tightening its grip on the throat of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yesterday, 28 March 2008, they finally killed it.