Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Both humanism and human rights focus on humankind. Both are committed to human enrichment, happiness, fulfillment, empowerment and emancipation. Hence it is important that humanism and human rights be promoted at the cradle of humanity because it is on this continent that humankind faces the most difficult and desperate challenges. It is in Africa that humanity has witnessed some of the worst forms of human rights abuses and `man's inhumanity to man'. It is on the black continent that humanity is in most urgent need of reinvention, recreation and rebirth. Hence it has become imperative that humanists get involved in the defence and promotion of human rights in Africa.  Particularly it has become necessary that the global humanist body, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) joins the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) in order to provide the humanist missing links in human rights promotion in Africa.

Currently, there is no humanist voice at the ACHPR. There is no NGO that represents the rights and interests of non-religious freethinking people in Africa. There is no member of the ACHPR that stands for the Godless or that works to highlight the human rights abuses perpetrated by state parties against Godless Africans. There are no NGOs at the Commission that specifically focus on those human rights violations committed in the name of God or religion.
As we all know, Africa is a deeply religious society. And very often religion is practiced and politicized at the expense of human rights, dignity and basic freedoms. The god idea has been used to degrade, enslave and exploit human beings. Non-religious -non-theistic-individuals suffer systematic exclusion, discrimination and deprivation of their fundamental rights. Godless people are perceived and treated with utter contempt and indignity. Unbelievers do not enjoy equal rights and protection under the law like their religious counter parts. For centuries, Freethinkers in Africa have been suffering in silence, behind the thick wall of religious extremism, hatred and intolerance But IHEU representation at the ACHPR will provide non-religious Africans an historic opportunity to break this silence, tear down the wall of theistic tyranny and oppression, and assert and demand for their rights.

Generally Africa has lost a lot of its human potentials to religious fanaticism and otherworldly nonsense. The black continent had wasted -and continues to sacrifice- much of its human capital on the altar of divinized intuitions, sacred misconceptions, magical thinking, transcendental illusions and superstitions. African women and children particularly are systematically victimized and exploited by upholders and peddlers of supernatural myths. And the time has come to highlight these abuses and hold nations that commit them accountable and responsible. The time has come to confront African states with the human rights abuses they perpetrate, aid or abet in the name of religion, God or superstition.

At the ACHPR, a humanist voice is needed to address those areas of human rights where Africa h