In 1996, the IHEU General Assembly adopted the following resolution. Any organisation wishing to become a member of IHEU is now obliged to signify its acceptance of this statement:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

In 1952, at the first World Humanist Congress, the founding fathers of IHEU agreed a statement of the fundamental principles of modern Humanism. They called it "The Amsterdam Declaration". That declaration was a child of its time: set in the world of great power politics and the Cold War.

This meeting of the IHEU GA resolves that IHEU and its Member Organisations support the GEAR Campaign (Gender Equity Architecture Reform) and the United Nations High Level Panel on system wide coherence recommendations whose main points are:

The development of scientific knowledge and the evolution of social-humanistic disciplines, with which the former is strongly connected, have fundamentally changed human civilization and lifestyle, especially during the last centuries.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) supports worldwide efforts to abolish the use of corporal punishment for the discipline of children.

Corporal punishment is defined as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing bodily pain or discomfort so as to change the subject’s behaviour or to punish them.”

This Board calls on all humanist individuals and organisations to be tolerant of each other's conceptions of humanism; and in particular, where ideas of other groups are within the basic statement on humanism, it calls on humanists to refrain from implying that these ideas are not truly humanism.

Board of Directors 1989

At the World Humanist Congress in 2002, an updated Amsterdam Declaration 2002 was adopted.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) representing the 56 Islamic States renewed its attack on the Universality of Human Rights at the 6th Session of the Human Rights Council that ended on 14 December.

On Human Rights Day, 10 December, Ambassador Masood Khan, speaking on behalf of the OIC, claimed that the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam

“.. is not an alternative, competing worldview on human rights. It complements the Universal Declaration as it addresses religious and cultural specificity of the Muslim countries”.

IHEU has followed up its presentation to the Council of Europe’s San Marino conference “The religious dimension of intercultural dialogue” with a massive written submission containing 40 specific recommendations. The paper was prepared in conjunction with the UK National Secular Society. It is also available in the original form, complete with contents and footnotes, as a PDF file for download below.