A European Informational Website
learn more
Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is a pressure group that promotes human rights.[1] Founded in the UK in 1961, AI draws attention to human rights abuses and campaigns for compliance with international standards. It works to mobilize public opinion in the belief that it is this which has the power to exert pressure on those who perpetrate abuses.[2]
Amnesty International operates on the idea that human rights are unalienable and universal, indivisible, will not be protected by governments alone, require individuals to act on behalf of others, and human rights organizations must be independent and impartial. It is inappropriate to support or oppose any particular political, economic, or religious ideology. Neither is it appropriate to single out any country or regime, or method of violation as the "worst." The focus is on the individual and all individuals.
On December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). At the same time governmental representatives, who made up the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, ruled that it had no power to interfere in the internal affairs of governments in order to act on specific human rights complaints. As a result, a situation developed in which "practical measures to give life to human rights principles began to lag far behind the rhetoric."[3] Twelve years later two Portuguese students were sentenced to seven years imprisonment for a remark made which was critical of the Portuguese government (see Salazar dictatorship).
Amnesty International was founded in July 1961 by Peter Benenson, an English lawyer who had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1958. He conceived of the idea of Amnesty International when, while traveling to work, he read of the plight of two students. Benenson also traced the idea back to the Spanish Civil War, and he was aware of existing activism in the area, notably the communist-backed 'Appeal for Amnesty in Spain'. Benenson, in consultation with other writers, academics and lawyers, particularly the Quaker peace activist Eric Baker, wrote via Louis Blom-Cooper to David Astor, editor of The Observer newspaper, who, on May 28 1961, published Benenson’s article The Forgotten Prisoners. The article brought the reader’s attention to those "imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government"[4] or, put another way, to violations, by governments, of articles 18 and 19 of the UDHR. The article described these violations occurring, on a global scale, in the context of restrictions to press freedom, to political oppositions, to timely public trial before impartial courts, and to asylum. It also launched 'Appeal for Amnesty, 1961', the aim of which was to mobilize public opinion, quickly and widely, in defence of these individuals who Benenson named "Prisoners of Conscience". In the same year Benenson had a book published, Persecution 1961, which detailed the cases of several prisoners of conscience investigated and compiled by Benenson and Baker.[5]
What started as a short appeal soon became a permanent international movement, ‘Amnesty International’, working to protect those imprisoned for non-violent expression of their views and to secure worldwide recognition of Articles 18 and 19 of the UDHR. From the very beginning, research and campaigning were present in Amnesty International’s work. A library was established for information about prisoners of conscience and a network of local groups, called ‘THREES’ groups, was started. Each group worked on behalf of three prisoners, one from each of the then three main ideological regions of the world: communist, capitalist and developing.
By the mid-1960s Amnesty International’s global presence was growing and an International Secretariat and International Executive Committee was established to manage Amnesty International’s national organizations, called ‘Sections’, which had appeared in several countries. The international movement was starting to agree its core principles and techniques. For example, the issue of whether or not to adopt prisoners who had advocated violence, like Nelson Mandela, brought unanimous agreement that it could not give the name of 'Prisoner of Conscience' to such prisoners. Aside from the work of the library and groups, Amnesty International’s activities were expanding to helping prisoner’s families, sending observers to trials, making representations to governments, and finding asylum or overseas employment for prisoners. Its activity and influence was also increasing within intergovernmental organizations; it would be awarded consultative status by the United Nations, the Council of Europe and UNESCO before the decade was out.
Leading Amnesty International in the 1970s were key figureheads Sean MacBride and Martin Ennals. While continuing to work for prisoners of conscience, Amnesty International’s purview widened to include "fair trial" and opposition to long detention without trial (UDHR Article 9), and especially to the torture of prisoners (UDHR Article 5). Amnesty International believed that the reasons underlying torture of prisoners, by governments, were either to obtain information or to quell opposition by the use of terror, or both. Also of concern was the export of more sophisticated torture methods, equipment and teaching to "client states."
Amnesty International drew together reports from countries where torture allegations seemed most persistent and organized an international conference on torture. It sought to influence public opinion in order to put pressure on national governments by organizing a campaign for the 'Abolition of Torture' which ran for several years.
Amnesty International’s membership increased from 15,000 in 1969[6] to 200,000 by 1979.[7] This growth in resources enabled an expansion of its program, ‘outside of the prison walls’, to include work on “disappearances”, the death penalty and the rights of refugees. A new technique, the 'Urgent Action’, aimed at mobilizing the membership into action rapidly was pioneered. The first was issued on March 19, 1973, on behalf of Luiz Basilio Rossi, a Brazilian academic, arrested for political reasons.
At the intergovernmental level Amnesty International pressed for application of the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and of existing humanitarian conventions; to secure ratifications of the two UN Covenants on Human Rights (which came into force in 1976); and was instrumental in obtaining UN Resolution 3059 which formally denounced torture and called on governments to adhere to existing international instruments and provisions forbidding its practice. Consultative status was granted at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1972.
By 1980 Amnesty International, now a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and a UN Human Rights Prize winner, was drawing more criticism from governments. The USSR alleged that Amnesty International conducted espionage, the Moroccan government denounced it as a defender of lawbreakers, and the Argentine government banned Amnesty International’s 1983 annual report.
Throughout the 1980s Amnesty International continued to campaign for prisoners of conscience and torture. New issues emerged, including extrajudicial killings; military, security and police transfers; political killings; and "disappearances."
Towards the end of the decade the growing numbers, worldwide, of refugees was a very visible area of Amnesty International’s concern. While many of the world’s refugees of the time had been displaced by war and famine, in adherence to its mandate, Amnesty International concentrated on those forced to flee because of the human rights violations it was seeking to prevent. It argued that rather than focusing on new restrictions on entry for asylum-seekers, governments ought to address the human rights violations which were forcing people into exile.
Apart from a second campaign on torture during the first half of the decade, the major campaign of the 80s was the 'Human Rights Now!' tour which featured many of the famous musicians and bands of the day playing concerts to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the UDHR.
Throughout the 1990s Amnesty International, now with a membership of one million[8] led by Senegalese Secretary General Pierre Sané, worked on a wide range of issues and world events.
Amnesty International was forced to react to human rights violations occurring in the context of a proliferation of armed conflict in: Angola, East Timor, the Persian Gulf, Rwanda, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. Amnesty International took no position on whether to support or oppose external military interventions in these armed conflicts. It did not (and does not) reject the use of force, even lethal force, or ask those engaged to lay down their arms. Rather it questioned the motives behind external intervention and selectivity of international action in relation to the strategic interests of those sending troops. It argued that action should be taken in time to prevent human rights problems becoming human rights catastrophes and that both intervention and inaction represented a failure of the international community.
However, Amnesty International was proactive in pushing for recognition of the universality of human rights. The campaign ‘Get Up, Sign Up’ marked 50 years of the UDHR. Thirteen million pledges were collected in support of the Declaration and a music concert was held in Paris on December 10, 1998 (Human Rights Day).
In particular, Amnesty International brought attention to violations committed on specific groups including: refugees, racial/ethnic/religious minorities, women and those executed or on death row. The death penalty report When the state kills and the ‘Human Rights are Women’s Rights’ campaign were key actions for the latter two issues and demonstrate that Amnesty International was still very much a reporting and campaigning organization.
At the intergovernmental level, Amnesty International argued in favour of creating a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (established 1993) and an International Criminal Court (established 2002).
After 2000 Amnesty International’s agenda turned to the challenges arising from globalization and the effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The issue of globalization provoked a major shift in Amnesty International policy, as the scope of its work was widened to include economic, social and cultural rights, an area that it had declined to work on in the past. Amnesty International felt this shift was important, not just to give credence to its principle of the indivisibility of rights, but because of the growing power of companies and the undermining of many nation states as a result of globalization.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the new Amnesty International Secretary General, Irene Khan, reported that a senior government official had said to Amnesty International delegates: "Your role collapsed with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York".[9] In the years following the attacks, some of the gains made by human rights organizations over previous decades were eroded. Amnesty International argued that human rights were the basis for the security of all, not a barrier to it. Criticism came directly from the Bush administration and The Washington Post, when Khan, in 2005, likened the US government’s detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Soviet Gulag.[10][11]
During the first half of the new decade Amnesty International turned its attention to violence against women, controls on the world arms trade and concerns surrounding the effectiveness of the UN. Its membership, close to two million by 2005,[12] continued to work for prisoners of conscience.
This mission translates into specific aims which are to:
Amnesty International targets not only governments, but also non governmental bodies and private individuals (non state actors).
To further these aims Amnesty International has developed several techniques to publicize information and mobilize public opinion. The organization considers as one of its strengths the publication of impartial and accurate reports. Reports are researched by interviewing victims and officials, observing trials, working with local human rights activists and by monitoring the media. It aims to issue timely press releases and publishes information in newsletters and on web sites. It also sends official missions to countries to make courteous but insistent inquiries.
Campaigns to mobilize public opinion can take the form of individual, country or thematic campaigns. Many techniques are deployed such as direct appeals (for example, letter writing), media and publicity work and public demonstrations. Often fund-raising is integrated with campaigning.
In situations which require immediate attention, Amnesty International calls on existing urgent action networks or crisis response networks; for all other matters it calls on its membership. It considers the large size of its human resources to be another one of its key strengths.
One of the most controversial issues the organization currently faces in the scope of its work is that of its position on abortion. It is argued that under certain circumstances abortion is a human right and so AI should recognize it as such; while many AI members support this stance, many others are fundamentally opposed to it and reject the premise on which the argument is founded. AI’s current position is to adopt a neutral stance on the issue and at a meeting in Mexico in August 2007 the International Council will decide whether or not to retain this stance; the Council will also consider a number of other proposals which may include advocating the right to abortion in certain circumstances and campaigning for its decriminalization and legalization in relevant countries. The topic is highly controversial within the organization. The organization’s position is that a final decision will not be taken until the August 2007 meeting and membership consultation will continue until then. In the meantime, senior figures in the Catholic Church (which has traditionally been a strong supporter of AI) and a group of US legislators have been among those who have condemned any moves that would change AI’s policy on abortion and warned the organization that the issue could divide its membership.
Amnesty International is largely made up of voluntary members but retains a small number of paid professionals. In countries where Amnesty International has a strong presence, members are organized as 'sections'. Sections coordinate basic Amnesty International activities normally with a significant volume of members, some of whom will form into 'groups', and a professional staff. Each have a board of directors. In 2005 there were 52 sections worldwide. 'Structures' are aspiring sections. They also coordinate basic activities but have a smaller membership and a limited staff. In countries where no section or structure exists people can become 'international members'. Two other organizational models exist: 'international networks', which promote specific themes or have a specific identity, and 'affiliated groups', which do the same work as section groups, but in isolation.
The organizations outlined above are represented by the International Council (IC) which is led by the IC Chairperson. Members of sections and structures have the right to appoint one or more representatives to the Council according to the size of their membership. The IC may invite representatives from International Networks and other individuals to meetings, but only representatives from sections and structures have voting rights. The function of the IC is to appoint and hold accountable internal governing bodies and to determine the direction of the movement. The IC convenes every two years.
The International Executive Committee (IEC), led by the IEC Chairperson, consists of eight members and the IEC Treasurer. It is elected by, and represents, the IC and meets biannually. The role of the IEC is to take decisions on behalf of Amnesty International, implement the strategy laid out by the IC, and ensure compliance with the organization’s statutes.
The International Secretariat (IS) is responsible for the conduct and daily affairs of Amnesty International under direction from the IEC and IC. It is run by approximately 500 professional staff members and is headed by a Secretary General. The IS operates several work programs; International Law and Organizations; Research; Campaigns; Mobilization; and Communications. Its offices have been located in London since its establishment in the mid-1960s.
Amnesty International is financed largely by fees and donations from its worldwide membership. It does not accept donations from governments or governmental organizations.
Criticism of Amnesty International may be classified into two major categories: accusations of selection bias and accusations of ideological bias. In addition, many governments, including those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,[13] China,[14] the Taliban , Vietnam,[15] Russia[16] and the United States,[17] have attacked Amnesty International for what they assert is one-sided reporting or a failure to treat threats to security as a mitigating factor. The actions of these governments — and of other governments critical of Amnesty International — have been the subject of human rights concerns voiced by Amnesty, and have not escaped the negative publicity that often accompanies such accusations.
Some contend that there are a disproportionate number of AI reports on relatively more democratic and open countries. This is the major source of the charge of "selection bias", with critics pointing to a disproportionate focus on allegations of human rights violations in for example Israel, when compared with North Korea or Cambodia.
Supporters claim that AI’s intention is not to produce a range of reports which statistically represents the world’s human rights abuses. Instead, its aim is (a) to document what it can, in order to (b) produce pressure for improvement. These two factors skew the number of reports towards more open and democratic countries, because information is more easily obtainable, these countries have usually made strong claims and commitments to uphold human rights, and because their governments are more susceptible to public pressure. AI also focuses more heavily on states than other groups. This is due in part to the responsibility states have to the citizens they claim to represent.
A tendency to over-report allegations of human rights abuse in nations that are comparatively lesser violators of human rights has been called "Moynihan’s Law," after the late U.S. Senator and former Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is said to have stated that at the United Nations, the number of complaints about a nation’s violation of human rights is inversely proportional to their actual violation of human rights.
In 2004 the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’s NGO Monitor released a study comparing Amnesty International’s treatment of Israel to its response to the twenty years of ethnic, religious and racial violence in Sudan (a predominantly Arab country) in which (at that time) two million people had been killed and four million displaced. They argued that Sudan’s human rights abuses were incomparably worse than Israel's. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said “there is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the earth.”[18] Columnist Anthony Lewis further wrote that “the Sudanese Government in Khartoum bombs southern villages and blocks food relief flights to areas where it wants the population to starve.”[18] In June 2001, the UN’s International Labor Organisation reported that in Sudan, as well as in three other African countries, “the wholesale abduction of individuals and communities is not uncommon."[19] The New York Times reported murder, abductions, and property destruction against the southern Sudanese.[20]
When NGO Monitor focused on the year 2001, they found that AI issued seven reports on Sudan, as opposed to 39 on Israel.[21] They specifically called attention to the difference in both scale and intensity:
From 2000 to 2003 they found 52 reports on Sudan and 192 reports on Israel. They state "[t]his lack of balance and objectivity and apparent political bias is entirely inconsistent with AI’s official stated mission."[21]
In 2004 Professor Don Habibi of UNC-Wilmington condemned Amnesty International, among others, for their alleged obsession with Israel, to the exclusion of other, supposedly worse violators. He writes:[22]
AI defenders respond by asserting that all nations should aspire to absolute respect for human rights, and that the difficulties associated with monitoring 'closed' countries should not mean that 'open' countries should receive less scrutiny.
With the outbreak of the more easily covered Darfur conflict, the imbalance was rectified. Between 2003 and 2006, AI issued 110 reports per year on Sudanese issues[23]. This compares with less than 100 articles per year for Israel and the Palestinian Authority combined between 2001 and 2006[24].
A 2007 study[25] found that "Amnesty International focused disproportionately on condemnations of Israel, far beyond any reasonable distribution of resources in a region marked by fundamental human rights abuses by many repressive regimes and sources of violence." "The number of publications devoted to Israel (excluding urgent actions) (48 documents) is significantly higher than other countries in the region, such as Hizbullah (17 documents), the Palestinian Authority (10 documents), Saudi Arabia (2 documents). The number of documents (excluding urgent actions related to Israel) (48) is even higher than the number of significant publications by Amnesty on Sudan (37)," the report said.
Other "few examples" included: NGO Monitor also examined Amnesty’s record during the Second Lebanon War, and concluded that the human rights organization was guilty of double standards in its treatment of Hizbullah and Israel. Amnesty accused "Israel of targeting residential areas without mentioning Hizbullah’s systematic practice of operating from within civilian areas," the report said, adding: "Many of Amnesty’s claims regarding the Lebanon War were false or severely lacking in credibility." In addition, "no statements or documents of any type were issued condemning Hizbullah for abducting two Israeli soldiers, despite Amnesty’s core mission of promoting freedom for political prisoners," the NGO Monitor report said.
Responding to NGO Monitor’s report, Amnon Vidan, director-general of Amnesty International’s Israel branch, said the organization expected Israel and other democratic states to abide by a higher standard of respect for human rights than non-democratic regimes.
"You can't take samples of Amnesty’s reports based on word counts," Vidan said. "Factually, the picture given in the NGO Monitor report is incorrect. Sudan does not receive less attention than Israel. In principle, Amnesty’s treatment of different crises is based on different parameters, such as our ability to influence, and need to present issues to media," he added.
He added that "Amnesty condemned both Hizbullah and the IDF for their attacks on residential areas and killing of civilians. Amnesty also noted that in some opportunities, civilians were used (by Hizbullah). But in some situations, the attacking power still has a responsibility not to harm civilians. Amnesty is aware of complexities, but there are many instances when (Israel) attacked civilian areas without there necessarily being a Hizbullah presence in the area, and with exaggerated use of force and no differentiation of civilian and military."
Addressing the charge that Amnesty counted Lebanese and Israeli civilians differently, Vidan said: "In Israel, one can differentiate between civilians and soldiers. In Lebanon, you can't always make that differentiation."[26]
Amnesty International endorses restrictions on speech which incites hatred towards any group of people, whether racial, religious, or otherwise. In reference to the Muhammad cartoon controversy, the organization stated:
The proponents of AI argue that this position, however, is consistent with international human rights law. Article 3 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ("The Genocide Convention"), for example, lists "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" as an act which should be punished alongside the actual commission of genocidal acts. This very clause has allowed for the prosecution of a number of top-level génocidaires who organized the Rwandan Genocide via public radio broadcasts, which provided the names and locations of prominent Tutsis and encouraged ordinary civilians to take part in the mass killing. The critics, on the other hand, point out that the convention only refer to incitement of actual crime which is illegal almost anywhere whether the speech is related to hate crime or not, and therefore, irrelevant to the issue of hate speech restriction which AI endorse.
In the foreword[27] to AI’s Report 2005[28], the Secretary General, Irene Khan, referred to the Guantánamo Bay prison as "the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law. Trials by military commissions have made a mockery of justice and due process." In the subsequent press conference, she added, "If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees" – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees — bring back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American dictators in the past. According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees held by the US. In 2004, thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations. AI is calling on the US Administration to "close Guantanamo and disclose the rest". What is meant by this is: To either release the prisoners or charge and prosecute them with due process.[29]
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the comments "reprehensible", Vice President Dick Cheney said he was "offended", and President Bush called the report "absurd". The Washington Post editorialized that "lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world’s dictators but for the United States."[30]
However, Edmund McWilliams, a retired senior US Foreign Service Officer who monitored Soviet and Vietnamese abuse of prisoners in their "gulags", defended Amnesty International’s comparison. "I note that abuses that I reported on in those inhumane systems parallel abuses reported in Guantanamo, at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at the Abu Ghraib prison: prisoners suspended from the ceiling and beaten to death; widespread "waterboarding"; prisoners "disappeared" to preclude monitoring by the International Committee of the Red Cross — and all with almost no senior-level accountability."[31]