Introducing Our New President<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Roy Brown is a (semi) retired British businessman who has lived in Switzerland for the past 16 years. He has been a long- time active Humanist and advocate of family planning, abortion rights, voluntary euthanasia, and human rights generally.

In 1987 while living in the Netherlands he founded, with his wife Diana, the World Population Foundation, a Dutch non-governmental organization working to raise awareness of the human, social and environmental problems connected with rapid population growth. WPF is now the leading European NGO in the field of population and reproductive rights and health. Roy served as chairman of WPF for 10 years.

Roy is a life member of the British Humanist Association but it was only in January 1999, after attending the 14th IHEU World Congress in Mumbai, he tells us, that he realized that Humanism was central to all the social issues that he really cared about. He joined the IHEU Committee for Growth and Development in May 2000 and became its chairman later the same year. He was elected a Vice-President of IHEU at the General Assembly meeting in Oslo in May 2001 and has now been elected President. He brings to the office over 30 years experience in both business and in the management of humanitarian organizations.

Roy believes that Humanism must be more than a passive philosophy of life. As President he aims to persuade our member organizations, particularly those in the west, to engage with their fellow Humanists in developing countries and to help them in their struggles against poverty, oppression, ignorance and disease.