Amnesty International

Amnesty International (commonly known as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization with the stated purpose of campaigning for internationally recognized human rights. "AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international standards." In particular, Amnesty International campaigns to free all prisoners of conscience; to ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners; to abolish the death penalty, torture, and other treatment of prisoners held by international law to be cruel or inhumane; to end political killings and forced disappearances; and to oppose all human rights abuses, whether committed by governments or by other groups. In addition, it has recently expanded its campaigns to include "economic, social and cultural rights".

History

Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by a Roman Catholic British lawyer named Peter Benenson and a Quaker named Eric Baker. Benenson was reading his newspaper and was shocked and angered to come across the story of two Portuguese students sentenced to seven years in prison – for the crime of raising their glasses in a toast to freedom. Benenson wrote to David Astor, editor of The Observer newspaper, who, on May 28, published Benenson's article entitled The Forgotten Prisoners that asked readers to write letters showing support for the students. The response was so overwhelming that within a year groups of letter writers had formed in more than a dozen countries, writing to defend victims of injustice wherever they might be.

By mid-1962, Amnesty had groups working or forming in West Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Ceylon, Greece, Australia (Amnesty International Australia), the United States (Amnesty International USA), New Zealand (Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand), Ghana, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Jamaica, Malaya, Congo (Brazzaville), Ethiopia, Nigeria, Burma, and India. Later in that year, a member of one of these groups, Diana Redhouse, designed Amnesty's Candle and Barbed-Wire logo, based on an old Chinese phrase: “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

In its early years, Amnesty focused only on articles 18 and 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights – those dealing with political prisoners, or more precisely, prisoners of conscience who espoused non-violence.

Amnesty and its writers campaigned for the release of prisoners in many oppressive regimes around the world; all such regimes were pressured equally, no matter which side (if either) of the Cold War they might align with. For example, the Spring 1986 newsletter campaigns for the release of specific prisoners from Guatemala, South Korea, South Africa, Syria, the U.S.S.R., and Vietnam.

Amnesty International was in particular a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union; they published detailed reports both of conditions in Soviet prisons and of how the Soviet political system as a whole was structured to prevent dissent and political freedom. Soviet internal security documents later found in archives indicated concern about Amnesty's anti-Soviet activities. Natan Sharansky is one of the more famous Soviet prisoners whose eventual release was secured with the help of Amnesty.

Amnesty was also very active in condemning oppressive regimes which committed murders, disappearances, extra-judicial killings, and outright massacres against their own citizens. For example, the September/October 1988 newsletter's lead article was an appeal to the United Nations Security Council to "act immediately to stop the massacre of Kurd civilians by Iraqi forces" under Saddam Hussein.

In 1977 Amnesty won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work defending human rights around the world.

During the 1980s, Amnesty increased its visibility via popular culture events, including The Secret Policeman's Ball series, the 1986 U.S.-based A Conspiracy of Hope Tour, and the 1988 worldwide Human Rights Now! Tour.

Over time, the organization has expanded its mission to work to prevent and end grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights. Amnesty is currently working with Oxfam International and IANSA, on international campaigns to "Control Arms" globally, and is working to do so in 50 different countries. It's stated intent is to control arms on the international, regional, national and community level. It states "The Control Arms campaign is calling for urgent and coordinated action, from the local to the international level, to prevent the proliferation and misuse of arms. The campaign is calling for: Civil society and local government agencies to take effective action to improve safety at community level, by reducing the local availability and demand for arms." It also has international campaigns to "Stop Violence Against Women" and to end the death penalty, amongst others. Amnesty also works directly on behalf of individuals suffering human rights abuses. In 2000 alone, AI worked on the cases of 3,685 named individuals – and in over a third of those cases, an improvement in the prisoner's condition occurred. In 2006, there were upwards of 7,500 AI groups with almost two million members operating in 162 countries and territories. Amnesty has over 1,800,000 members, including 350,000 in the United States, one of the largest sections. Since AI was founded, it has worked to defend more than 44,600 prisoners in hundreds of countries.

Goals and strategy

• Free all Prisoners of Conscience (a "POC" is a person imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their beliefs, which differs somewhat from the typical use of the term political prisoner, but not including persons whose beliefs Amnesty International define as "hate speech").
• Ensure fair and prompt trials.
• Abolish all forms of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, including the use of the death penalty.
• End state-sanctioned terrorism, killings, and disappearances.
• Assist political asylum-seekers.
• End all forms of violence against women
• Co-operate with organizations that seek to put an end to human rights abuses.
• Raise awareness about human rights abuses around the world.
• Raise awareness of the threat that poverty is to human dignity and promotion of peace and justice.

Their mission statement is : "to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination in the context of our work to promote all human rights, as articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." They follow their mission statement by obtaining funding and support from other people.

To fulfill these goals, Amnesty sends teams of researchers to investigate claims of human rights abuses. It publicizes its findings and mobilizes its members to lobby against the abuse — by letter-writing (to various government officials), protesting, demonstrating, organizing fund-raisers, educating the public about the offense, or sometimes all of the above.

Amnesty International works to combat individual offenses (e.g. one man imprisoned for distributing banned literature in Saudi Arabia) as well as more general policies (e.g. the recently overturned policy of executing juvenile offenders in certain U.S. states). Amnesty works primarily on the local level but its 45-year history of action and its Nobel Peace Prize gives it international recognition.

Most AI members utilize letter-writing to get their message across. When the central Amnesty International organization finds and validates to its satisfaction instances of human rights abuse, they notify each of more than 7,000 local groups as well as over one million independent members, including 300,000 in the United States alone. Groups and members then respond by writing letters of protest and concern to a government official closely involved in the case, generally without mentioning Amnesty directly.

Amnesty International has followed a neutrality policy called the "own country rule" stating that members should not be active in issues in their own nation, which also protects them from potential mistreatment by their own government. This principle is also applied to researchers and campaigners working for the International Secretariat to prevent domestic political loyalties influencing coverage.

Recently, Amnesty has expanded the scope of its work to include economic, social and cultural rights, saying that these concerns had arisen out of its traditional work on political and civil rights. Its 2004 annual report said that "it is difficult to achieve sustainable progress towards implementation of any one human right in isolation. […] AI will strive to […] assert a holistic view of rights protection. It will be particularly important to do so in relation to extreme poverty, and the human rights issues underlying poverty." As an example it asserts that "The right to effective political participation depends on a free media, but also on an educated and literate population.

One of the most controversial internal issues the organization currently faces is that of its position on abortion. It has been argued that under certain circumstances abortion is a human right and that AI should recognize it as such; while many AI members support this stance, many other members 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 of abortion 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.

Organization

File:Irene Khan 2003.jpg

Irene Khan, Secretary General since August 2001

Amnesty International is governed by the International Executive Council (IEC) – a board of eight members elected for two-year terms by the International Council Meeting, which is itself composed of delegates from each country's Board of Directors. The IEC hires a Secretary General (since 2001, Irene Khan) and an International Secretariat, located in London.

National and local organizational structures vary. In the United States, individual members, regardless of age, and each individual organization votes to elect members to the 18-seat national Board of Directors for a three-year term. The Board of Directors hires an Executive Director and a staff. The Canadian home for Amnesty International is Goodwin House.

Secretaries General

• Peter Benenson, 1961–1966 (President)
• Eric Baker, 1966–1968
• Martin Ennals, 1968–1980
• Thomas Hammarberg, 1980–1986
• Ian Martin, 1986–1992
• Pierre Sané, 1992–2001
• Irene Khan, 2001–present

Criticism and response

Criticism of Amnesty International may be classified into two major categories, accusations of selection bias and ideological bias. In addition, many governments, including those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China, the Taliban ^{[citation needed]}, Vietnam, Russia and the United States, 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.

Alleged selection bias

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. In 2006 the organization accused Israel of violating humanitarian law in connection with the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.

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.

Israel and Sudan

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 and slavery 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.” 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.” In June 2001, the UN's International Labor Organization reported that in Sudan, as well as in three other African countries, “the wholesale abduction of individuals and communities is not uncommon.” The New York Times reported murder, abductions, and property destruction against the southern Sudanese.

For 2000–2003, 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.”

In 2004, Professor Don Habibi of UNC-Wilmington condemned Amnesty International, among others, for their obsession with Israel, to the exclusion of other, worse violators. He writes:

This obsession would make sense if Israel was among the worst human rights offenders in the world. But by any objective measure this is not the case. Even with the harshest interpretation of Israeli’s policies, which takes no account of cause and effect, and Israel’s predicament of facing existential war, there can be no comparison to the civil wars in Sudan, Algeria, or Congo. Like the UN, the policies of AI and HRW have more to do with politics than human rights.

Human Rights NGOs and the Neglect of Sudan, Don Habibi

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 [1]. This compares with less than 100 articles per year for Israel and the Palestinian Authority combined between 2001 and 2006 [2].

Freedom of expression vs. hate speech

Amnesty International's 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 right to freedom of opinion and expression should be one of the cornerstones of any society. ... However, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute — neither for the creators of material nor their critics. It carries responsibilities and it may, therefore, be subject to restrictions in the name of safeguarding the rights of others. In particular, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence cannot be considered legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Under international standards, such 'hate speech' should be prohibited by law. ... While AI recognizes the right of anyone to peacefully express their opinion, including through peaceful protests, the use and threat of violence is unacceptable."

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.

Guantánamo Bay comments

In the foreword to AI's Report 2005 , 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 we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge and prosecute them with due process."

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."

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."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Bibliography

• ^ Dennis Bernstein's interview with Prof. Francis Boyle, CAQ, Summer 2002. NB: Boyle is a professor of international law at Univ. of Illinois, a former AI-USA board member, and someone who threatened to sue AI-USA over its biased coverage.
• ^ Alexander Cockburn, How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More?, CounterPunch newsletter, April 1-15, 1999. Discusses how several human rights organizations fell into line about the bombing of Serbia.
• Alan Dershowitz, Amnesty Int’l redefines ‘war crimes’, Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2006

External links

• Amnesty International website
• Amnesty International UK section
• Amnesty International USA section
• Amnesty International Canadian section
• Amnesty International Australian section
• Amnesty International New Zealand section
• Irrepressible, an Amnesty International campaign
• Make Some Noise, Amnesty International's campaign around music with a message
• Amnesty International Calls For Retrial of Mumia-Abu Jamal
• The Control Arms Campaign
• "The Best Hope for Peace in Darfur" recorded on April 19, 2006 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture, mp3 format
• Slideshow of pictures from the denounce torture rally and annual general meeting at Portland, Oregon.

Critical Viewpoints

• Amnesty Int’l redefines ‘war crimes’ - Alan Dershowitz, Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2006
• Amnesty continues to distort human rights rhetoric to attack Israeli actions in Lebanon NGO Monitor

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Amnesty_International  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Amnesty International"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.