In 1996, the IHEU General Assembly adopted the following resolution. Any organisation wishing to become a member of IHEU is now obliged to signify its acceptance of this statement:

"Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality."

In 1952, at the first World Humanist Congress, the founding fathers of IHEU agreed a statement of the fundamental principles of modern Humanism. They called it "The Amsterdam Declaration". That declaration was a child of its time: set in the world of great power politics and the Cold War.

This meeting of the IHEU GA resolves that IHEU and its Member Organisations support the GEAR Campaign (Gender Equity Architecture Reform) and the United Nations High Level Panel on system wide coherence recommendations whose main points are:

The development of scientific knowledge and the evolution of social-humanistic disciplines, with which the former is strongly connected, have fundamentally changed human civilization and lifestyle, especially during the last centuries.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) supports worldwide efforts to abolish the use of corporal punishment for the discipline of children.

Corporal punishment is defined as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing bodily pain or discomfort so as to change the subject’s behaviour or to punish them.”

This Board calls on all humanist individuals and organisations to be tolerant of each other's conceptions of humanism; and in particular, where ideas of other groups are within the basic statement on humanism, it calls on humanists to refrain from implying that these ideas are not truly humanism.

Board of Directors 1989

At the World Humanist Congress in 2002, an updated Amsterdam Declaration 2002 was adopted.

IHEU has called a UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur's report on Islamophobia "seriously flawed".

In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council, endorsed by IHEU, World Population Foundation representative Diana Brown called on the Council to defend the human rights of all and not to attempt to defend religions against the human rights of people.