In a major campaign on violence in the name of religion in summer 2005, IHEU, jointly with two other NGOs, the Association for World Education (AWE) and the Association of World Citizens (AWC), issued 11 written statements to the UN Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights. The Sub-Commission is a panel of 26, nominally independent, human rights experts whose brief is to collect information on human rights issues, to appoint special rapporteurs, and after due deliberation to make recommendations to the Commission.

The written statements can be found on the Commission website at: http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?b=5&se=7&t=7. The statement references are: E/CN.4/Sub.2/2005/NGO/2 (and /3, /4, /5, /6, /8, /15, /16, /28, /29 and /31). These 11 statements actually represent about a third of all NGO statements submitted to the Sub-Commission this year.

The main purpose of these statements was to highlight violence, killing and abuse being carried out worldwide in the name of religion, and to support our call to the Human Rights Commission to "unequivocally condemn any call to kill, to terrorise, or to use violence in the name of God..."

These written statements were supported by an oral statement made to the Sub-Commission on 26th July on behalf of the three NGOs by representative David Littman. See: www.iheu.org/uncampaign/subcom1#statement or the PDF version on the UN web site (Enter ID: subcommission and password: 57sub.)

The presentation of this oral statement was interrupted by members of the Sub-Commission on four separate occasions on "points of order" (which included ad-hominem attacks on the speaker), in an attempt to censor the presentation. As a result, insufficient time remained for the presentation to be given in full.

See the annotated transcript of the session at: www.iheu.org/uncampaign/complaint#transcript

IHEU immediately issued a press release about this censorship: See www.iheu.org/uncampaign/subcom1

Rene Wadlow, main representative of both AWE and AWC, together with Roy Brown, main representative of IHEU, then sent a formal letter of complaint to the chairman of the Sub-Commission: see www.iheu.org/uncampaign/complaint

In a further oral statement to the Sub-Commission on 10th August, IHEU representative Leonore Reverdin read a statement prepared by Roy Brown condemning the ad-hominem attacks and asking the members of the Sub-Commission to recognise their responsibilities - not to their respective governments or religions - but to all of humanity. See www.iheu.org/uncampaign/subcom2 or: the Word version on the UN web site. (Enter ID: subcommission and password: 57sub.)

On 8th August, the ambassador of Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the 56 states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, read a statement to the Sub-Commission, clearly prompted by our statements and by the complaint to chairman. See: www.iheu.org/uncampaign/pakistan

This four-page response is replete with claims of "Islamophobia" and attacks on the integrity of our contributors, yet fails completely to address the issue of violence in the name of religion.

Our detailed rebuttal of this statement can be found at: www.iheu.org/uncampaign/iheuresponse