CFI at the United Nations
In Fall of 2005 the Center for Inquiry was granted special consultative status as a non-governmental organization, or NGO, under the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
This entitles the Center for Inquiry to designate official representatives to UN headquarters in New York and UN offices in Geneva and Vienna. The Center for Inquiry can participate in conferences and briefings open to NGOs, and generally present the scientific, skeptical, and secular humanist perspective to the international community.
The Center’s UN mission also coordinates its international initiatives, which can now be found in England, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Peru, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, India, Nepal, and New Zealand. A Center in Bejing will be inaugurated in 2008.
In 2006, the UN office hosted a public lecture by the human rights activist Shahriar Kabir on secularism and fundamentalism in South Asia and a lecture by CFI chairman Paul Kurtz on planetary ethics. Current projects include a nationwide study of Indian scientists’ beliefs on religious and moral questions. UN representative Dr. Austin Dacey traveled to India, Bangladesh, and Russia to lecture, teach, and meet with colleagues and journalists.
In March 2007, Center for Inquiry organized a major conference of secularists of majority Muslim countries, Secular Islam Summit.
