See more information and registration form here: http://www.iheu.org/ga2012. 

Organized by Humanist Canada, Quebec Humanist Association and IHEU in conjunction with the IHEU General Assembly. See http://www.humanistconference.ca/. 

When Rob Buckman – Humanist, oncologist, and TV personality – realized he was dying from an autoimmune disease, he thought it would be useful to make a film to help others learn from his death. He was right about the value of the film: Your Own Worst Enemy was a great critical success and helped countless people address a topic that is taboo and yet unavoidable. But Rob was wrong about the subject of the film: thanks to a new treatment he survived another three decades after the 1981 movie. And those three decades were filled with the love, learning and laughter that made him a hugely popular figure on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Thursday September 17 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, International PEN, with support from three other organisations and the Norwegian Mission to the UN Geneva, hosted a public meeting called "Faith and Free Speech, Defamation of Religions and Freedom of Expression." The consensus that emerged from the meeting was that criminalising defamation of religion is not the way forward.

See http://www.atheistconvention.org/ for details.

In the November edition of IHN, we reported on the position taken by the Federation Nationale de la Libre Pensée on the wearing of religious clothing in private life. The article argued strongly that while it is the duty of the state to ban all signs of religious membership in state schools and public services, it should refrain from dictating specific attire in the private domain.

In May this year, a Commission under Justice Sean Ryan reported to the Irish Government on the wide-scale abuse of children in Irish institutions over a very long period.

With the recent public acknowledgment by the Canadian government that thousands of children died in church-run "Indian residential schools" across Canada, that country faces a historic test: will it hold itself and its churches accountable for the crimes against humanity inflicted by them on aboriginal people?

So far, the answer appears to be No.

Can the ongoing fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan be called a genocide? Phyllis and Sylvain Ehrenfeld (“Does the UN Have the Power to do its Job?”, IHN May 2008) have no doubts. However, the Darfur conflict has been called the first Climate Change war - and for good reasons.