The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded some 70 natural disasters in 2005. To come to the aid of the needy, during the year, it asked for $5.7 billion (£3.2 billion) in assistance - of which only 57% has been raised. While the world community has indeed been rallying round to help, it is clear more is needed from us, and we need to ask our governments to do more as well.

In February 2006, the NSW Humanists, the Australian National Secular Association (ANSA) and the newly formed Secular Party of Australia commissioned a Newspoll survey which, after questioning a carefully selected group of 1200 found that a majority of Australians, including Catholics, would support government legislating to separate church and state in Australia. The poll also said that a majority of Australians, including Catholics, also approve of same-sex legislation. Importantly, 28.8 per cent of Catholics strongly agreed with same-sex legislation and 20.2 per cent partly agreed.

The Sixth World Atheist Conference will be held in Vijayawada, India on 5, 6 & 7 January 2007

Discuss aspects of atheism such as promotion of scientific temper, secular social work, human rights, and striving for an alternative value system. Join a galaxy of distinguished atheists and Humanists from all over the world.

Registration: US$ 150. (Cheques/bank drafts in the name of "ATHEIST CENTRE" payable at Vijayawada).

IHEU welcomes the new Secretary General of the Norwegian Humanist Association, Mrs. Kristin Mile. A lawyer by training, she has worked for the last six years as the Norwegian Gender Equality Ombudsperson. She also has extensive international experience both within the UN and the EU systems.

Kristin takes over from Lars Gule, who has accepted an academic position.

Thanks to you, IHEU's website has evolved into the world's best resource on International Humanism! We are pleased to announce that in January 2006 alone the website had 70,120 visitors - 158% higher than the same month last year! About 10% of these are repeat visitors, which means that while we have a loyal core group, we are getting more first-time visitors. Visitors stay longer, visiting on an average 5-6 pages each time.

Around 400 International NGOs (INGOs) have participatory status with the Council of Europe (CoE), and these NGOs constitute the 'Conference of INGOs of the Council of Europe', one of the four pillars of the CoE.

An insensitive Danish newspaper and hordes of brutish, intolerant Muslims all over the world have reopened the discussion about freedom of expression (page 5). Caricatures, one of which was interpreted as showing Prophet Mohammed of Islam as a terrorist, have been published in Denmark and reproduced in several countries. This witless art gave extremist Muslims the excuse to organise violent protests. Their intimidating tactics and destructive actions - possibly with encouragement from Muslim states - have also led to deaths in several continents.

Last year, the Prime Ministers of Spain and Turkey called for an Alliance of Civilisations to counter the increasing hostility between Islam and the West. But is such an alliance possible? Surely the Danish cartoon affair will have dashed any such hopes. On what common ground could an alliance possibly be based? For the Islamists, the only basis would be recognition of the supremacy of Islam and its laws. This is what lies behind their calls for "respect" for Islam. But to many westerners such a recognition would be nothing short of renunciation of our highest ideals and hard-won freedoms, amounting to surrender to a medieval philosophy that has no place in the modern world. No doubt many Muslims found the Danish cartoons offensive, but the massive over-reaction has been purely political, orchestrated at the highest level within the Islamic world. (see p 5). Most Europeans would reply that burning embassies in response to an independent publication of cartoons was even more offensive. This is not a clash of civilisations but a clash of values.

As Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of Jyllands Posten, publishers of the Danish cartoons explained, it was never the intention of his paper to insult Muslims, but to test the climate of fear and self-censorship that has existed in Europe since the murder of Theo van Gogh. Yet virtually every commentator on this affair has tacitly assumed that the cartoons were intended to be gratuitously offensive; supposedly just one more manifestation of the "growing Islamophobia of the West". Tariq Ramadan, one of the media's favourite spokesmen for 'moderate' Islam pointed out that Islam strictly forbids representations of the prophet "in order to avoid the temptation of idolatry". But unless one accepts Ramadan's unspoken assumption that something forbidden for Muslims must be forbidden for everyone else, non-Muslims need not feel bound by this constraint. In any case the cartoons were not meant to inspire idolatry, nor are they likely to.

On 4th January, one of India's most successful Humanists organisations celebrated its 80th Anniversary. The Periyar Self-Respect movement, Dravidar Kazhagam is one of the largest member organisations within IHEU with about 200,000 supporters. The celebrations, presided over by the inspiring president of Dravidar Kazhagam, Dr. K. Veeramani, were combined with a State-level conference of the Rationalist Forum of Tamil Nadu. The celebrations included an evening parade that completely blocked the centre of Chennai for over an hour, taking 40 minutes to pass the reviewing stand. With Babu Gogineni, Levi Fragell, and Dr Vijayam, leader of the Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, I was privileged to attend the ceremony and to address the estimated 16,000-strong crowd.