Following a tour that began in Sydney, Australia last September, an extraordinary theatre production called “Can We Talk About This?” opened at the National Theatre in London on 9 March.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) launched another attack at the UN Human Rights Council today (5 March 2012)  on the decision of the Council to hold a panel discussion of discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity. They accused the Human Rights Council of attempting to create new human rights law; saying the Council had no right to hold a discussion that was highly controversial and not supported by a majority of the Council members.

The 57 Islamic States and their allies have for several years been pushing the Human Rights Council to tighten international law on freedom of expression by introducing “complementary standards” needed, they claim, to combat new abuses of freedom of expression such as “Islamophobia”. Yet in many Islamic States incitement to religious hatred is allowed to go unchallenged.

Each summer the Humanist Association of Ireland and the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland jointly host an all-Ireland Summer School in the beautiful medieval coastal town of Carlingford, about half-way between Belfast and Dublin. The ninth summer school will meet from September 2 to 4, 2011, to explore “Humanist Morality.”

The friends of Mauritania, mostly Islamic states, who spoke in an hour-long debate in the Human Rights Council Friday, 18 March 2011, would have us believe that this vast but under-populated West-African desert state was a model in its efforts to comply with international human rights law.

Speaking in a dialogue with the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the 16th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva today, 3rd March 2011, IHEU representative Roy Brown condemned the continuing selectivity of the Council, comparing the immediate and excellent response of the Council to the barbarity of the Libyan regime with its lack of effective response to many other crimes against humanity. Brown cited in particular the judicial murder of hundreds of people in Iran and the deaths of more than 200,000 innocent civilians in the Sudan.

At the Human Rights Council today, IHEU representative Roy Brown raised the alarm over a proposed Ugandan law that would require police permission for meetings of more than three people. A detailed analysis of the Ugandan bill is available at http://www.iheu.org/uganda-bill. The full IHEU statement to the UN on “Unwarranted Restrictions on Freedom of Expression and Assembly” is given below.

In a statement to the Human Rights Council this morning, 15 June 2010, IHEU Main Representative, Roy Brown, highlighted the vital need to recognize the reproductive rights of women. Acknowledging the importance of better reproductive health care, Brown went on to emphasize that "women also desperately need reproductive rights: the information, the means, and the freedom to decide whether and when to become pregnant" in order to reduce the "appalling toll of maternal mortality".

At the Millennium Summit in New York exactly ten years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted ten "Millennium Development Goals" (MDGs) aimed at eliminating poverty, hunger and inequality, and improving healthcare and education worldwide by the year 2015. Today the goal furthest from achievement is MDG 5 "improving the health of women" with an estimated 500,000 women still dying every year from pregnancy related causes.

On 25 March, in the closest vote yet on "Combating Defamation of Religion", the UN Human Rights Council adopted the annual resolution by 20 votes to 17 with eight abstentions. This compares with the 2009 vote of 23 in favour, 11 against, with 13 abstaining. The vote came at the end of a heavy campaign by IHEU and several other NGOs against the concept of defamation of religion.