Bulletin # 32

28 February 2000

In the farming village Jolapar, 30-km north from the capital Dhaka, modern technology has changed life for many of the 5000 villagers. They got connected to the world via mobile phone. Less than one per cent of Bangladesh’s 125 million people have a phone of any kind. The few mobile phones have up to now been a luxury reserved for the urban rich. The new mobile phone of the village Jolapar runs in a mobile phone service in one of the modest hutments, and it makes a big difference for the whole village: Not only that the villagers can keep in contact with their relatives in other parts of the country and even abroad and make appointments with physicians in the nearest clinic. Thanks to the phone, they are, moreover, informed about the developments of the market prices for vegetables and poultry in the nearby market places and can plan and decide accordingly about trade questions. The phone has the potential to be a tool for economic growth.

Jolapar is one of more than 1000 villages, which set up a mobile phone service since 1997. By the end of this year, there will be 2000 villages with a phone. The village mobile phone project is one result of the work of the Grameen Bank, which was established in 1976 by Muhammad Yunus. The university economics teacher is a pioneer of the concept of micro-credits, which has proved to be a successful way of building economic structures at grassroot level in developing countries. Since its founding, the Grameen Bank has lent 2 billion Dollars to 2.3 million Bangladeshis, most of them poor rural women with almost no formal education. A micro-loan helps them to get a start in a small-scale business and become financially independent. With micro-loans of 18.000 takas and a one-day training course, Grameenphone, the bank’s telecommunication subsidiary, enables rural borrowers to become mobile phone service operators and make a monthly profit of 50 Dollars (twice the per capita income in Bangladesh). In this unique scheme not only the operator benefits, but also all of the mostly illiterate residents of the countryside.

Jean-Claude Pecker
depuis le Collège de France, Paris

Union Rationaliste

Representative of International Humanist and Ethical Union in UNESCO, Paris

Statement made in the grand symposium during the concluding session of the

2^nd International Rationalist Conference.

I am an atheist, a humanist, a freethinker, a rationalist, and a fighter for human rights. Such are many other people, in great number. But I have been, and I am, in some ways, also an activist, as everyone in this conference hall. But let us face, as a matter of fact, that we activists are not many, much outnumbered by antagonistic tendencies. So we must fight hard, and learn how not to be disappointed or even demoralised by the slow pace of progress.

There is indeed in today’s world a globalisation of economical and political interests. But the globalisation of social and human rights is not there. Strong nationalism here and there creates isolated communities and reactionary behaviour, often associated with the uprising of violence. We have to realise that we cannot do much against it. Our work shall, therefore, aim at long term effects.

And I see three main directions of work:

1.Expose the irrational, even ridicule it, be it in the field of religion, superstitions, miracles, or in the field of astrology and pseudo-sciences (for the general public), or again (for intellectuals), post-modernism, relativism etc., i.e. the irrational philosophies.

2. Spread right views of the real world, the nature and spread our rationalist ideas among different sections of the public: the media of course; and then through the media, to the general public. But above all, spread them among the schoolteachers in order to prepare the young generations, on whom depends our future, for the emergence of a rationalist society.

3. Work within our groups for a better understanding of globalisation. Weigh the pros and cons of the free market societies before any public action, which otherwise could be premature, unrealistic, and possibly misleading.

Steinar Nilsen

President, European Humanist Federation (EHF)

Former President, Norwegian Humanist Association

My home country, Norway, has been presented by a German journalist as a country suited only for people with peculiar tastes. This may be true. Norway is a modern state with a thriving oil industry, taxis that use satellite navigation, technology companies large and small, and fishfarms along most of the long, rugged coastline. And it boosts the largest Humanist organisation in the world, more than 60,000 members constitute more than 2 % of the adult population. Norway is also the only country in Europe to have refused membership in the European Union by referendum, not only once, but twice. It is one of the few countries in Europe left with a state church, and if you want to be king of Norway, you are by law required to be a member of this church. Also half the government must be members, which has at times lead to some hasty returns to the church by people setting a cabinet higher than whatever life stance organisation they used to belong to. This state religion relic of the past reflects itself in other laws as well, for instance in the law for primary schools. "The school is obliged to help parents to raise their children using moral and Christian values." The sentence itself is absurd, it assumes that all parents wish help in raising their children the Christian way, which is blatantly untrue. This object clause of the law is still there, in 2000. Under cover of this law Christianity has had huge preferences in the education in the schools. With the exceptions listed above, no one is obliged to be members of the of the Lutheran state church. And until a couple of years ago, parents could withdraw their children from the Lutheran courses in school. Mainly due to the efforts of the Norwegian Humanists more and more schools offered life stance education during the 1970s and 1980s. Here religions and humanism were presented without any sort of favouritism, neutral enough so that Jews, Muslims and Humanists could send their children there and be certain that Christianity was not presented as the one and only true religion. Norwegian Humanists were not entirely happy with this situation. We have always meant that schools should be for everybody in all topics, thus teaching children from all types of homes to live in harmony with each other. Parliament finally thought this would be a good idea and changed school plans in 1996 to have all children participate in one school subject. Unfortunately when the plans for this subject were made public, it was clear that Christianity still was favoured in a way that made this subject unacceptable to non-Christian families. An unusual alliance of Muslims, Jews, Humanists and others protested to no avail. All children are now by law required to take part in this type of education if they go to a public school. This is not the end, of course. Unfortunately, the majority of the Norwegian parliament has not learned that the true sign of a genuine democracy is the way the state treats its minorities. All of us in the minorities feel that we are discriminated against, and it does not change the situation one iota that our "Lutheran" majority happily tell us that, no, you are wrong, there is no discrimination. At present parental right to withdraw children from religious education has been refused by the court of Norway in two separate cases, one by Humanists, the other one by an Islamic organisation. The Humanists have taken their case to a higher court. We have no high hopes for Norwegian courts in this, but by and large when the Supreme Court has refused us our rights as well, we can take the matter to European Court. And then we think the authorities of Norway are in for a surprise. Living in Norway is not bad. But a majority insists in thinking that if it is Christian, it must be good for you, or at least not bad. "A little Christianity will certainly not harm your children", I hear again and again. But it does harm, in my opinion. And according to Human rights it is my decision, not that of society. And though Norway moves both strangely and sometimes slowly with respect to the rest of the world, I feel confident that both State Church and this odd school subject will disappear in ten to twenty years. At least that part of Europe which constitutes the European Union seems to be more tolerant than my native country. They have had no problems accepting a president of the European Humanist coming from a non-EU country, and we have gained access to various organs allowing us to present the Humanist view on ethical matters. We have solid contacts in the EU administration in Brussels; we are invited to seminars and congresses and are invited to express our stands on matters concerning life stance. We are, more or less, treated on an equal basis with the religious denominations. Many statements by the EU take into consideration that a multitude of life stances exist, and offer them equal opportunities instead of Christian favouritism the Norwegian way. In the beginning of October 1999 the new President of the EuropeanCommission, Romano Prodi, received, as it is usual, a delegation of the European Conference of Catholic bishops (COMECE). They discussed the role of the churches with regard to the European construction. It is reasonable that a secular entity such as EU should give no special privileges, and so we are working to have a humanist meeting with the commission president as well. In Europe humanist members are a very small percentage of the population. Opinion polls, however, show that many people in reality have the Humanist life stance without bothering to become members of any Humanist organisation. The potentiality for growth consequently is there. To be able to grow, I think we must move out of the Universities and out to the country, the villages and the cities. In spite of modest membership figures, many European Humanist organisations work diligently and seriously towards our Humanist goals. It may seem slow at times. The life stance market is large; there are many offers from temples, churches and mosques. In addition we have a growing tendency of many people constructing their own religions, more or less. They take parts from one religion or two, add some astronauts and pyramids, top it with a dash of self-awareness and mystic inner voices, and, whoops, there you have yet another New Age mysterious creed. To us it does not make sense. Humanism, however, makes sense. And in the long run, sound sense is what usually make things work. We may have a way to go, in Norway and in Europe, in Asia, Africa, America and Australia. But the process of going that way has a fulfillment in itself. As the Swedish poetess Karin Boye expressed it:

Though there's a goal,

A purpose we shall gain

The journey in itself

Is never done in vain