Amnesty International

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide campaigning movement that works to promote all 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; ensure fair and prompt trials for political prisoners; abolish the death penalty, torture and other cruel treatment of prisoners; end political killings and "disappearances"; and oppose all human rights abuses, whether by governments or by opposition groups.

According to internal legends, Amnesty International was founded in 1961 by a British lawyer named Peter Benenson. 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 his newspaper, and, in an article entitled “The Forgotten Prisoners”, 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 all who had been victims of injustice. By mid-1962, Amnesty had groups working or forming in West Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Canada, Ceylon, Greece, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Ghana, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Jamaica, Malaya, Congo, 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. At this time, Amnesty focused only on articles 18 and 19 of the UN Declaration of human rights- those dealing with political prisoners. Today, there are upwards of 7,500 AI groups with around a million members operating in 162 countries and territories. Since AI was founded, it has worked to defend more than 44,600 prisoners in hundreds of countries. Amnesty has expanded its mission to work for all victims of human rights violations, not just prisoners of conscience. In 2000 alone, AI worked on behalf of 3,685 named individuals- and in over a third of those cases, an improvement in the prisoner’s condition occurred. In 1977, Amnesty won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work defending human rights around the world. Amnesty members end each Annual General Meeting with a commemorative “toast to freedom”.

AI's goal to maintain every human’s basic rights as establish under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. In accordance with this belief, Amnesty works to:

• Free all Prisoners of Conscience (A POC is a person imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their beliefs)
• 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, or ‘disappearances’
• Assist political asylum-seekers
• Co-operate with organizations such as the United Nations who also seek to put an end to human rights abuses
• Raise awareness about human rights abuses around the world.
• To fulfill these goals, Amnesty operates as a vast lobby. When word is heard of a human rights abuse, Amnesty sends a team of researchers to thoroughly and impartially investigate the claim. If the claim is found to be legitimate, Amnesty publicizes its findings and mobilizes its members to act out 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 works to combat individual offenses (one man imprisoned for distributing banned literature in Saudi Arabia) as well as more general policies (the United States’ policy of executing juvenile offenders). Amnesty works primarily on the local level, but after fifty years and a Nobel Peace Prize is well enough respected to have a powerful voice on the larger scale.

Most AI members utilize letter writing to get their message across. When the central Amnesty organization finds and validates instances of human rights abuse, they notify each of the local groups (more than 7,000, all told) as well as all independent members (300,000 in the US alone; over a million worldwide). 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 is financed largely by subscriptions and donations from its worldwide membership, and except for a small core of paid directors, all of Amnesty’s members, coordinators, organizers, and workers are volunteers.

Amnesty is a non-partisan organization and does not accept money donations from governments or governmental organizations. All of Amnesty’s capital comes from the pockets of its members and donations from other non-partisan organizations. Amnesty’s budget for the 2000 fiscal year was as follows:

• Membership Support 2,486,700.00 13%
• Campaigning Activities 1,811,200.00 10%
• Publications and Translation 2,487,200.00 13%
• Research and Action 5,065,100.00 26%
• Deconcentrated Offices 1,246,300.00 7%
• Research and Action Support 2,615,900.00 14%
• Administrative Costs 3,247,200.00 17%
• Relief Payments £125,000
• Total: £19,510,000

The fact that Amnesty is comprised of small autonomous groups loosely joined together by larger governing bodies makes explaining the structure of Amnesty’s bureaucracy complex. On a national level, the membership directly elects (each group gets a vote; each individual member gets a vote, regardless of age) prominent members to the 18-seat Board of Directors for a three-year term. The Board of Directors hires an Executive Director and a staff.

On a world-wide level, Amnesty 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 comprised of delegates from each country’s Board of Directors. The IEC then hires a Secretary General and an International Secretariat.

External links:

• http://www.amnesty.org/