Humanists International Launches Its 2024 Freedom of Thought Report in DC

Last week, hundreds joined online and dozens joined in person to witness the launch of Humanist International’s 2024 Freedom of Thought Report (FoTR). The Freedom of Thought Report assesses every country in the world on the basis of human rights and legal status for humanists, atheists, and the non-religious.

It’s a comprehensive overview of the state of our movement worldwide – capturing the relative safety and peril humanists live in, wherever they are.

The theme of this year’s report is blasphemy, and Leena Manimekalai, award-winning Indian filmmaker and poet, penned the report’s forward. After creating a performance documentary short in which she embodied the Indian goddess Kali, Manimekalai became “the victim of Hindu fundamentalist cyber-vigilantes’ carefully orchestrated campaign of digitized violence.” “Fascism always demands loyalty to a single authority, often to a single race or religion,” she wrote. “Art can be many things to many. For me, art is resistance.”

Speakers at Thursday’s launch event included:

• Fish Stark, Executive Director, American Humanist Association;
• Emma Wadsworth-Jones, Casework and Campaigns Manager, Humanists International;
• Mohamed Elsanousi, Commissioner, United State Commission on International Religious Freedom;
• Ria Chakrabarty, Senior Policy Director, Hindus for Human Rights; and
• Mubarak Bala, President, Humanist Association of Nigeria.

This year’s Key Countries edition examines ten countries across the globe that have been updated in 2024, including recent developments in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burundi, Cyprus, Eritrea, Iraq, Italy, Nigeria, Portugal, and Qatar.

Key findings of the report included the following:

• “The overwhelming majority of countries fail to respect the rights of humanists, atheists, and the non-religious”;
• “The countries with the worst records on freedom of thought are usually the countries with the worst records on human rights overall”;
• Blasphemy laws exist in eighty-nine countries across the globe, punishments range in severity, and “in effect, you can be put to death for expressing atheism in 12 countries”;
• “The promotion of religious privilege by the State is one of the most common forms of discrimination against atheists”; and
• “Religious privilege is not only a form of discrimination in and of itself, but it is also a signifier of more general societal discrimination against atheists.”

Read the 2024 Freedom of Thought Report here, and view the interactive site here.

Watch the 2024 Freedom of Thought Report launch here.