A new year lies ahead – a time for renewal. But having wished everyone the best for the coming year, how often do we then go on just as we did before?

Jamaican AIDS activist, Steve Harvey, was shot dead by a gang of men who burst into his home in late 2005. Soon afterwards, Nokia Cowen, drowned when he jumped into Kingston harbour to escape a violent homophobic mob. A few weeks later, Jamaica's trade ambassador, Peter King, was found dead with his throat slashed and multiple stab wounds.

In the 1990s a film was made in India called Fire. It wasn’t a particularly good film and would have gone into oblivion, as many such films do, had it not been for one fact, that the film depicted a lesbian relationship between its two lead characters.

Islam is an unchallengeable entity in all spheres of life in Pakistan. No laws or phenomena that contradict Islamic Law are given validation. LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People) rights are not supported by any political or humanitarian party that does not value self destruction.

Section 377 was introduced by Lord Macaulay in 1860 as a part of the Indian Penal Code. A plain reading of the section makes clear that it punishes 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature' with either imprisonment of 10 years or life and fine.

By using religion as a weapon, Reverend Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church embody the antithesis of the Humanist value of human dignity. Ironically, a recent jury verdict in Maryland may now turn him into a symbol for another important Humanist value: freedom of expression.

In May 2004, the IHEU met in Kampala, Uganda for its first General Assembly in Africa, and for a regional conference to inaugurate the African Humanist Alliance. One of the issues discussed at the event was homosexuality.

Development of the Cairo consensus

The outcome of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) would probably not be possible in the polarised world of today. It produced two key results:
1) Adoption of “Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” (SRHR), and
2) Adoption of a Program of Action including funding commitments.

From the outside, many people see the USA as a super-modern, highly developed country with a fairly uniform culture. But in reality, it is a mass of contradictions. It is a superpower, and yet millions of its citizens are not covered by health insurance – this in a country where medical fees are very high.

In a short space like this, one can only present the briefest of sketches of a multifaceted issue in a huge and complex continent. I shall not even touch on the question of homosexual rights, since that is dealt with elsewhere in this issue (see Page 12). Africa has many intractable problems and they all impact on the questions under consideration.