This week the world’s population officially reached seven billion people. Yet United Nations (UN) projections now suggest that the world’s population will rise to 10 billion by the end of the century. The question we all face is how well can our world adapt to 3 billion additional people?

Malaria has been a human scourge for thousands of years. One of the United Nations major health goals is to control the spread of this disease.

According to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, European policies of multiculturalism have “utterly failed”. Certainly, when intolerance and discrimination are allowed to thrive in the name of multiculturalism, something has gone seriously wrong. According to IHEU representative Roy Brown, speaking in reply to the presentation of a report to the Human Rights Council on contemporary forms of racism, turning a blind eye to the oppression of women in Europe’s minority communities is itself a form of racism.

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.

IHEU representative Hannah Bock raised two examples of traditional practices that are continuing to impede efforts to reduce maternal mortality: child marriage in Afghanistan and the forced feeding of young girls in Mauritania.

The UK gay Humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has warmly welcomed the UN Human Rights Council resolution on sexual orientation. It is the first UN resolution ever to bring specific focus to human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The theme for this year’s World Health Day—on April 7, 2011—was “Combat Drug Resistance”. It raised the alarm about the future of public health across the world.

Antibiotics and other antimicrobial miracle drugs have been extremely beneficial for many of the dramatic advances in human health. But can the benefits of miracle drugs be sustained?

The World Day of Social Justice, observed this year on Feb. 20, is an urgent call for all countries to take decisive and concrete steps to promote the UN's mission for human rights, human well being and human dignity. The recent astonishing and historic events in the Middle East and North Africa testify to the crucial importance of social justice.

In October 2010, the UN Human Rights Council working group on the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action held a two-week workshop which discussed, inter alia, “structural discrimination”. The report of that workshop was presented to the plenary of the Human Rights Council on 22 March 2011. Strangely, the report contained no mention of what is unquestionably the most widespread, pernicious and deeply-rooted example of structural discrimination on Earth: I refer of course to the caste system.