Engineer, Humanist and Human Rights activist.

Roy W. Brown is a British-born Humanist and Human Rights activist. He was president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) from 2003 to 2006.

In 2002, Brown acted as coordinator of the project to update the founding document of IHEU, the Amsterdam Declaration. The Amsterdam Declaration 2002 was adopted unanimously by the 15th World Humanist Congress and the IHEU General Assembly as “the official defining statement of World Humanism”.

Since 2004 Brown has served as IHEU Main Representative at the UN, Geneva, where he has worked at the UN Commission on Human Rights and its successor, the Human Rights Council. Brown has prepared written submissions and spoken at the plenary sessions of the Commission and Council on issues as diverse as Female Genital Mutilation, the plight of the Dalits in India, slavery in North Africa, witchcraft and witch hunts in Africa, freedom of expression, the concept of defamation of religion, the incompatibility of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the role of the Holy See in protecting child abusers, and the failure of the Holy See to honour its obligations under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 2006 the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the European Union with a declaration to be known as the Berlin Declaration that was to make reference to Europe’s “Christian roots”. Brown proposed a campaign to challenge this potentially divisive idea which promised to neglect not only other faiths but Humanism, secularism and Europe’s debt to the Enlightenment. He was appointed co-ordinator of the campaign to create an alternative to the Berlin Declaration, to be called “the Brussels Declaration”, which set out Europe’s common heritage based on the values of the Enlightenment.

The Brussels Declaration obtained the support of nearly 1000 leading European citizens including elder statesman, Nobel laureates, religious leaders and politicians. It was presented to the representative of the European presidency at the European Parliament one month before the anniversary celebrations, and addressed to all 27 heads of government with a plea that the values set out in the Brussels Declaration be incorporated into the Berlin Declaration.
When the Berlin Declaration was promulgated on 27 March 2007, it contained no reference to God, religion or Europe’s supposed Christian heritage, and became the Preamble to the draft European Constitution.