Geneva, March 16, 2010 -- The Vatican’s record on child abuse was criticized today at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Highlighting the Vatican’s repeated and ongoing efforts to cover up evidence of child abuse by priests, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) accused the Vatican of violating its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

In a decision that may have serious implications for church-state separation, the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled that the governmental use of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the U.S. Constitution. In a 2-1 decision, the court stated that the phrase does not form an unacceptable government endorsement of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Barbara Bennett Woodhouse is among the United States’ foremost experts on children’s rights. She joined the Emory University Law faculty in 2009 as the L.Q.C. Lamar Chair in Law. She also serves as the co-director of the Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic. Her scholarship and teaching focus on child law, child welfare, comparative and international family law and constitutional law.

For the first time in history a US administration has met with the American nontheist community for a policy briefing. The Feb. 26 meeting between White House staff and leaders of the Secular Coalition for America focused on the top public policy issues of the nontheist community, including ending proselytizing in the US military, improving the government’s 'faith-based initiative', and protecting children from neglect and abuse that can occur due to a lack of government oversight over faith-healing treatment providers.

The American Humanist Association (a founding member organization of the International Humanist and Ethical Union) has praised President Obama's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast, expressing gratitude that in his remarks the President included and commended nontheists among those who are leading relief efforts in Haiti. "The compassion and decency of the American people is expressed… by Americans of every faith, and no faith, uniting around a common purpose, a higher purpose," Obama stated at the event this morning, 4 Feb. 2010.

On January 20, 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama in his inaugural speech stated, “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers.” For the first time in history, millions of Humanists, atheists, and other freethinkers in the United States were acknowledged as Americans.

The Council for Secular Humanism is a transnational organization based in the United States. It exists parallel to and independent of national Humanist organizations in various countries and is a specialist member of the IHEU.

Celebrating a new kind of holiday tradition, the American Humanist Association has launched a new advertising campaign similar to the one that ran in the nation's capital last year, which made headlines around the globe. Only this year, instead of the campaign focusing on a single location, ads will be blazoned across transit systems in five cities--including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco--marking the first-ever nation-wide humanist holiday advertising campaign.

“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau). This is a fact: Freedom is not universally respected, even in western countries. All the governments – not only in so-called “Muslim” countries – that currently oppose human rights in the name of “cultural diversity” are also against any separation of religions and the state.

January 20, 2009, was an historic date in the United States. It was momentous for the inauguration of the first black U.S. President, Barack Obama, an event that bookmarked the civil rights movement and ushered in new hope that the U.S. had made enormous progress in soothing long-seated racial tensions.