Andrew Copson has been Chief Executive of Humanists UK since 2009 and is currently serving his final term as President of Humanists International, which office he has held since 2015. He is the author of Secularism: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press) and, with Alice Roberts, of the Sunday Times Bestseller The Little Book of Humanism. This is a series on global Humanism with the first session as “The State of Global Humanism: Overview.”
Here we talk about Humanism in the global South.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk a little bit today about the global South. Humanists International, we had an expansion and a diversification in organizations, the Board, the membership, over a decent number of years. What areas have really shown a lot of growth and diversification within Humanists International?
Andrew Copson: It’s hard to pick but perhaps the most thriving have been our organisations in Asia. The work of the humanists in Nepal, for example, always amazes anyone who has anything to do with it. They are distinctive for drawing on the humanist tradition and finding their own humanist background and culture, which is rich in Nepal as in India. I think that’s where Humanism in the global South takes off: when it makes it clear that the humanist approach to life is not just one that grew up in Western Europe but is one with deep roots in every part of the world. To answer your question in another way. Where has there been, as it were, the most dynamic growth? I think, probably, in Africa. So many people are hooking up with the ambition to organize on humanist terms there. And of course in Latin America. My answer is turning out to be everywhere. Isn’t it? [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Copson: We’ve seen dynamic startups there as well. Similarly, the big problems facing humanist organizations in the global South are present almost everywhere. There are economic problems. It is often difficult for people who work hard for their economic survival and their families’. It is much harder that for people in the global North to have time to dedicate to organizing civil society. There’s also almost a complete lack of government money for that organizing. You think about Norway, with tens of millions of public money going to them yearly. That is not going to happen in any global South country. But, of course, what they all have in common in my experience is that they are run by people who are younger on average than people in the global North. That’s a benefit for them too. It leads to dynamism, energy, and enthusiasm (not to criticize older people!). In my opinion and observation, it has led to greater dynamism and activism in the global South. So, there are strengths and challenges in all of the regions that we’re talking about, which are, by and large, comparable.
Jacobsen: What about the difficulties individuals will face in these countries?
Copson: Obviously, the global South countries are less democratic in general than countries of the global North. That’s clear by any measure. As a result, those who argue for the sorts of causes humanists argue for, progressive causes like human rights for women, more choice for women, human rights for children, away with superstitions and taboos and conformity based on unreasonable, irrational beliefs; rights for LGBT people, greater democracy, greater freedom of expression – these are all things it is harder, on average, to argue for in the global South than in the global North. So, humanists are facing more threats in this way.
Jacobsen: Do you think it’s incumbent on global North humanist organizations to financially support global South organizations?
Copson: I think so. First, let me frame it slightly differently; I think humanist organizations in different parts of the world all have things the exchange of which with humanist organizations in different parts of the world would be valuable. Many organizations in the global South have insights into their own successful activities that would assist struggling organizations in the global North. Money transfers are not the only transfers in the humanist network. There are transfers of knowledge and experience that go from South to North as much as they go North to South. Of course, the money in general is in the North and more of that should go south. I trust that humanists will not see themselves bound completely or even primarily by ties of geography, nation, and region, because we see the human family as one. Help humanists wherever you find them. You get more bang for your buck by supporting humanists in the global South than you do in the global North.
Jacobsen: Nation-states and governments can be not friendly to humanists in the global South in terms of jailings, violence, death threats, blasphemy laws, and so on. These are the more serious areas of concern for many humanists at risk. For those global South countries and organizations and individuals who are very active, what risks at an individual level do states that are theocratic and authoritarian pose to individuals who don’t have the luxury of a free democratic system with the rule of law?
Copson: These threats very often start, of course, before the government gets involved. In very conformist or closed societies, these threats start in the home. It can be first at home where speech is silenced, conformity is enforced, and freedom is stifled. That’s the system that exists because the state lets it or wants it, either by action or neglect. Then, of course, outside of the home, as you rightly say, states enforce conformity and deter opposition in various ways. In many countries, we’re talking about active censorship and the policing of language. In others, state shaping of the school curriculum is along closed lines and minimizes options in terms of freedom of thought. Certainly, they do not give much space to humanist ideas compared to the jurisdiction in the global North, where they may do. Of course, it is not perfect in the global North either.
If we think of countries like Pakistan or India, there might be impunity for those who are not state actors but take actions the state implicitly approves of. We are all familiar with the stories of the student humanist who was lynched on his campus by his fellow students for being humanist. The humanist bloggers who were murdered in Bangladesh. No justice for them against their killers. The humanist activist who has been murdered in India. Again, no justice for them because the state allows this to happen. The people who take violent actions against humanists have effective impunity to do so. Of course, it is not just creating a situation in the family or in the public schools or other institutions or non-state actors to take violent action. Sometimes, the state gets involved itself. They can arrest and imprison humanists. Mubarak Bala in Nigeria is a good example. Humanists in Malaysia and Indonesia find themselves under legal sanctions and are imprisoned in at least two cases. There is a spectrum of social oppression and discrimination going all the way to active state persecution and, in some cases, death by the state, not just non-state actors.
Jacobsen: Emma Wadsworth-Jones was noting in Copenhagen various cases of people at risk. It tends to be much more difficult for women to come forward. How do identifiers like being a woman, being a part of the LGBTI community create an extra context in which one’s universal humanist rights can be prone to violation and financial status in a country can be much lower, typically, in cases where it’s violence from the state, community, social, and otherwise?
Copson: That’s right. They are aggravating factors that exacerbate the nature of the persecution that you might suffer. There is another dimension to it, as well. Humanists and humanist organizations will very commonly be LGBTI activists, women’s rights activists, and democratic activists, which makes it more political and makes it even more dangerous. Not just personal identity, as you correctly say, which can be aggravating factors for state persecution, but also the commitment implicit in a humanist approach to advocate for the rights of marginalized people. In India, for example, caste discrimination and ethnic discrimination, when it is often ethnic identity as a so-called untouchable cast is an aggravating factor. This is intersectional discrimination that people suffer in these contexts. It is very real. Of course, the additional factor is people who have abandoned their religion. We’re talking about the abandonment of religion in these contexts because the family and home life are often very religious. Many of the people who have put aside religion and adopted a humanist approach to life have done so because of what they suffered as women, as LGBT people. That’s an added dimension, too.
Jacobsen: I don’t have the answer to this question.
Copson: Neither do I.
Jacobsen: What was the…
Copson: …Does that imply you knew the answers to all your other questions? [Laughing]
Jacobsen: I had inklings. What was the first humanist organization in the global South?
Copson: I don’t know the answer to that question either.
Jacobsen: In terms of contemporary Humanism, there is a formal structure.
Copson: I would say it was, probably, almost certainly either in Latin America with the Positivists or in India under the British-inspired rationalists. They’re the two oldest trends or traditions of organised Humanism I know. When Gandhi was in the U.K., he was a member of what is now Humanists U.K. for example! There’s certainly formal Indian rationalism; it had an organized structure in the 19th century. So, that would almost certainly make it one of the earliest. I know Brazil had positivist meeting houses in the 1880s. But anyway, all that is only in terms of organizations. There are humanist traditions that go much longer than that in terms of common sense and cultural background in all places. The Humanism of society rather than the Humanism of organization.
Jacobsen: Who would you consider the best historian of Humanism?
Copson: What an invidious question to ask [Laughing].
Jacobsen: Who do you like, historians of Humanism? I would like to reach out to them for an interview.
Copson: Oh! David Nash is very good at 19th-century Humanism in particular. Callum Brown and Charlie Lynch are very good at 20th-century Humanism. Those three recently collaborated on the history of Humanists in the U.K. Sarah Bakewell has written a very good recent book on humanists and non-organizational humanists. She talks about organized humanists as well. It’s from Europe back to the Renaissance. Some medieval humanists in Europe she identifies. I think she’s right to do so. Uttam, who is one of the ambassadors of Humanists International. He is writing a book about the history of humanists in Nepal that goes back. That’s very interesting. Jeaneane Fowler wrote well on the ancient Indian Humanism of 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. Her husband, Merve Fowler, has written about Humanist ideas in China. These are not about organized humanists but about humanist ideas. Charles Freeman and Catherine Nixey have written quite well about the humanist tendency in pre-Christian Europe, Greece and Rome. There is the timeless multi-volume history of freethought by J.M. Robertson. That is a good work. A.C. Grayling, of course. Towards the Light is a wonderful history. He writes not just about humanists but liberalism.
Jacobsen: Why does this myth persist that Humanism is a North American or a European phenomenon?
Copson: I suppose Western European culture, including its global exports of culture and its imposition of culture, has contained an awful large amount of implicit Humanism. So, it’s the region where Humanism had its biggest articulation across many different state boundaries and languages for a long time. Inevitably, I think that’s going to colour things. Often, colonization and the spread of Christianity eliminated Indigenous humanist traditions around the world when European states, whom Humanism very seldom inspired in their colonial efforts, came in. Colonizing forces deliberately reinforced religious traditions in the countries they colonized as opposed to more freethinking humanist traditions as a way of dividing and ruling but also safely categorizing and regulating the people they controlled in the colonial states.
I think those are just two of the reasons. Of course, especially when monotheistic religions colonized cultures in the modern period, they were often written down, whereas a lot of preceding humanistic culture was very oral. So, that is another explanation. We only know about the classical Indian humanist tradition because there are texts. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know. That’s the same in China. It’s the same in Europe. For a long time in Europe, the humanistic culture of the ancient world was lost because the texts weren’t accessible or framed in a way that would reveal them as being texts of the humanistic approach. So, I think there are lots of reasons. During the colonizing phase of Europe, Christianity had a lot of power. During the colonizing phases of the Arab world, Islam had an awful lot of power. In that context, they’ve eliminated a lot of freethought and a lot of humanist traditions. They’ve been great allies in that global effort to a great extent!
Jacobsen: Last question, with the recent declaration refinement, 2022, what aspect of the global South cultural and intellectual milieu added to the refinement of humanist principles compared to 2002, 1952?
Copson: The Amsterdam Declaration, of course, strives to be a universal document. So, I would see the principles within it as expressing all humanists’ aspirations. But compared to 1952, there was a far larger number of people from the global South involved in drafting the declaration and representatives from the global South involved in commenting on and agreeing on the declaration. Suppose I had to pick out two or three of the subtle differences between ’22 and ’52 that I noticed during my chairing of the commission drafting the declaration; the global South was especially motivated. (And I don’t want to imply there were global South concerns and then there were global North concerns, but there were things that were particular concerns.) I think the first one was what we are just talking about, making sure it is clear humanist ideas have occurred around the world and across time and are not just part of the Western tradition. In 1952, it was firmly said that Humanism was the outcome of a long tradition, but it was silent about where that tradition came from. In 2022, we explicitly said humanist values have a tradition in most societies. That’s what we said. It is as old as human civilization. That was very important for people from the global South. It was for all of us, but particularly, perhaps, important to their representatives. Racism and prejudice were explicitly referenced in 2022, but it wasn’t in 1952. I think that was important. The most severe racism in the world in terms of its consequences on individual lives is either within the global South or affects migrants from the global South to the global North or their descendants. That gives an extra dimension to the phenomenon of racism and how we thought humanists had to explicitly express our opposition, our anti-racism.
Then I think there was – and this was where there was only a slight preference for this coming from the global South compared with the global North – the reference to human beings as part of and responsible to the rest of the natural world and life on this planet. Of course, everyone probably cares about that, or anyone who cares about the short-term and long-term future of humanity cares about that. I think it’s particularly acute to those in the global South who are on the sharp end of the climate crisis because the contexts of the states in which they live lack the infrastructure to help them deal with the severe changes that we’re going through, especially compared to the governments of the global North. The governments of the global North, with all their resources, can’t even deal with the consequences of the climate crisis so certainly, state infrastructure in the global South finds itself in a particularly weak position to deal with it. Those were amendments that had strong voices from the global South. But the thing about the declaration is that it’s a declaration of all of us.
Jacobsen: Andrew, thank you.
Copson: [Laughing] Okay, very good.
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Photo credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen.