Humanists International
Humanists International is the global representative body of the humanist movement, uniting a diversity of non-religious organisations and individuals.
ID: 565204227036-69
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Daniel Freund (Member of the European Parliament)
17 Nov 2025 · EU FoRB Envoy nomination
Response to EU Civil Society Strategy
5 Sept 2025
Humanists International submits this contribution to the forthcoming EU Civil Society Strategy to highlight systemic challenges undermining civic space and equal participation in Europe. Across the EU, civil society organizations (CSOs) face mounting financial insecurity, political hostility, and administrative barriers, which fall especially heavily on minority and rights-based groups. Humanist organizations in particular encounter entrenched patterns of unequal treatment compared to religious groups, with discriminatory funding practices and restricted access to public functions. Human rights defenders advancing humanist values - whether on migration, LGBTI+ equality, or sexual and reproductive rights - are increasingly subjected to judicial harassment, smear campaigns, and restrictive laws that obstruct their work. Meanwhile, EU structures for engaging with civil society remain opaque and unbalanced, privileging religious organizations and depriving non-confessional groups of equal participation. We urge the European Commission to address these issues in its forthcoming Strategy by adopting the recommendations outlined in this submission. Doing so is essential to ensuring equal treatment for all CSOs, protecting human rights defenders, and fostering a transparent, inclusive civic dialogue across the EU.
Read full responseResponse to Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030
10 Aug 2025
The following summarizes the comments by Humanists International, an international NGO and the global representative body of the humanist movement. See the attached PDF document for our full submission and sources. (1) Women, girls, and LGBTI+ persons face gender-based violence often rooted in religious or traditional discourse, with some EU Member States failing to prevent such acts or address religious "justifications". The Commission should adopt more inclusive policies, building on Directive 2024/1385, to prevent harm based on a persons sex, gender, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. (2) Reproductive freedom remains restricted across Europe due to barriers to accessing birth control and safe abortions, often driven by conservative religious beliefs and high rates of conscientious objection. The Commission should make sexual and reproductive health and rights a prominent pillar of the new Strategy, pushing for bold measures to fully realize these rights across Member States, including by taking up the My Voice, My Choice initiative. (3) Comprehensive sexuality education faces organized opposition in Europe, often building on anti-LGBTI+ and anti-feminist sentiment. The Commission must uphold the Roadmaps Principle 6 commitments and ensure that the promotion of such education becomes part of the Strategy. (4) Despite its shortcomings, the Commission should make passing the horizontal anti-discrimination directive part of the Strategy, work with the Council Presidency to overcome resistance among Member States, and advocate for more ambitious equal treatment legislation. (5) There is a growing, well-funded backlash against gender equality, with some anti-gender groups receiving EU or Member State public funding. The EU Commission should propose concrete actions in the Strategy to combat the anti-gender movement and prevent the misuse of EU funds by anti-rights groups. (6) While committed to intersectionality, the Commission needs to operationalize it. Gender equality surveys are often not sufficiently disaggregated, missing dimensions like sexual orientation and ethnicity. The new Strategy should propose collecting data, including from governments and surveys, disaggregated across many dimensions of discrimination, and renew the monitoring portal to track progress.
Read full responseMeeting with Antonella Sberna (Member of the European Parliament)
19 Nov 2024 · Article 17 TFEU