Sonja Eggerickx, President of IHEU, came this morning to address our congress, and she talked about the possible cooperation between IHEU and IAF. You have in your files the proposed Convention, even if some printing mistakes have to be corrected.
Why such a Convention? In the last decades, atheists and freethinkers, and their organizations have been scattered; some of them belong to IHEU, or even to what remains from the World Union of Freethinkers, others are isolated. That is the reason why we are building IAF.
IHEU aim is to gather together humanists, atheists, freethinkers, agnostics, rationalists, skeptics, etc. It is then important to avoid any conflict between IHEU and IAF, but to work together whenever it is possible.
This is exactly the objective of this Convention.
Roger LEPEIX
This Convention will preserve the full autonomy of both organizations; it includes only the way they will cooperate.
The IHEU Executive Committee, in which I am the current treasurer, agreed in principle on this Convention, but its wish is to wait until IAF acts as a constituted organization, before extending the discussion on the Convention. We must therefore start the process, by accepting this Convention, in order to propose it to IHEU as a basis for the discussion.