In a landmark interview, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, the new Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal has spoken to IHEU of the new administration’s commitment to secularism. “We will introduce Constitutional measures to protect Secularism”, he told Babu Gogineni.

Tanzania is the largest country in East Africa. It is a union of two former independent states i.e. the main land Tanganyika and Indian Ocean Zanzibar island . The founding president of Tanzania, Mwalimu(teacher) Julius Nyerere, was a unique African leader who helped to unite this country of many ethnicities and beliefs.

We do not have separation of government and religion in Norway today. We still have a state church with specific privileges in society, having a firm hold over the mindset of the people in Norway – usually under the guise of “our cultural heritage”.

In 1980, the French Catholic Bishops launched a brochure, receiving official imprimatur and titled ‘United Europe in Pope's Teaching’. It said ‘Pope Pius XII called to a new organisation for Europe’. Facing an overwhelming wave of secularisation, ‘the main remedy resides in bringing back the Christian traditional values that organised along the centuries unity and welfare for all our continent. Christianism, part of our European common legacy, could and must give a new spirit and a new soul for a new Europe facing the threats of materialism’.

Every Humanist organisation has to work within the constraints of the society and the political situation it finds itself in, and the context the British Humanist Association (BHA) works in is somewhat paradoxical, to say the least.

In what country has a regional court and the main administrative body given the ruling that the crucifix is “the symbol of a secular state”? One would assume it would be in a very religious country. But no, it is in a country where less than half of the citizens declare that they have confidence in the Catholic Church, and where the number of people who regularly attend Sunday mass or choose to get married in church is falling drastically.

After the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, Slovakia aimed to establish a true democracy, cement the rule of law and join the European Union. The new Constitution, passed by Parliament in 1992, begins bravely: “The Slovak Republic is a sovereign, democratic state governed by the rule of law. It is not bound by any ideology or religion”.

Four French Member Organizations of IHEU want to reaffirm the principles of secularism on the occasion of the announcement of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to France, September 12 -15, at the invitation of the Bishops’ Conference of France. This visit is aimed at “celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin to Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto of Lourdes”.

Marriage is in decline, but legal humanist weddings in Scotland are up by 64%. The General Registrar Office of Scotland has released its statistics on marriage in Scotland in 2007. Marriage overall and religious marriage in particular continue to decline, but the number of marriages conducted by the Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) has risen dramatically for the third year running.

The International Liaison Committee of Atheists and Freethinkers (ILCAF), meeting in Washington, DC on 4 June 2008, resolved to begin preparatory debate towards the proposed formation of an International Organization of Freethought in Norway in 2011.