Campaigns Blog

It’s one week on from the Zimbabwean election and it’s been quite a week for the country… I’ll try to give a quick summary of the past week’s events, and our concerns following reports of human rights violations in some districts. Urge...

"Yousef (7), Mohammed (5), Ali (2), Hamza (12), Zahra (10), Husna (8), Fatima (10), Ahmad (7), Abdel Karim (2), Hassan (18 months)… Why did they bomb here? … There were only civilians here. Our quarter was full of life, children...

Zimbabweans have gone to the polls today for the first time since the violent elections of 2008, when 200 people were killed and thousands more were injured and displaced from their homes. The majority of the global media is focussing...

Indiscriminate attacks and reckless use of weapons, use of children, torture and ill-treatment of captives, sectarian threats and attacks, abductions and hostage taking, killings of civilians, including journalists and members of...

By Neil Sammonds, Syria Researcher at Amnesty International Twelve kilometres south of the border with Syria lies the Za’atri refugee camp in Jordan. Over 130,000 refugees, who have fled the conflict in Syria, live here in a 7km-wide...

Today, Amnesty colleagues and I will present 7,000 action cards to the South African High Commission and an 11,000 strong petition to the Tanzanian High Commission in London, calling for violence-free elections in Zimbabwe . What have...

Over the past few months Amnesty groups all around Europe have been gathering signatures, calling on the EU to intervene where governments are breaching anti-dscirmination laws by abusing Romani people's rights. Many thousand of you...

Non violent resistance in Syria? Don’t make me laugh. Those trying to topple Assad are all cannibals and head choppers….or so the likes of the academic “Angry Arab”, Asad Abu Khalil would, it would seem at times, try to convince you...

Last week a group of us from the office went to the premier of a documentary at the LSE called Beatrice Mtetwa and The Rule Of Law. Having already seen a short preview of the film the day before we knew we were in for a treat. Since...

On June 18 at Amnesty International UK, the Bassel Shehadeh Foundation was officially announced at a special screening of the documentary Syria through a Lens - The life and works of the film maker Bassel Shehadeh. Syria is probably...

Amnesty International UK recently hosted 16 leading activists from the Syrian Non Violence Movement (SNVM). They came for an intensive 2 day training session in our Human Rights Action Centre . The all day sessions were on “campaign...

On a recent visit to a camp near Atmeh, just inside Syria near the Turkish border, some 21,000 people were sheltering amid hellish conditions. Heavy rain leaked into the tents and had turned the clay soil into thick slippery mud, raw...

Update 17June: Following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Mozambique on Saturday, SADC recommended that the Zimbabwean government push the election date back to 14 August. Zimbabwe's constitutional court now...

This blog post is by Frances Webber, human rights lawyer, author of Borderline justice: the fight for refugee and migrant rights (Pluto, 2012), an honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society and vice-chair of the Institute of Race...

It’s been a historic week for Zimbabwe as President Mugabe signed a new constitution into law, a positive development that has the potential to increase ordinary Zimbabwean's enjoyment of their basic rights. The constitution paves the...

Mus’ab al-Hamadi, aged 32, is a well-known media activist and member of the Local Coordination Committee (LCC) in Hama. He has been heavily involved in collating information and posting videos of abuses committed by Syrian government...

Human rights breakthroughs are like buses, you wait ages for one… We’d barely recovered from the excitement of the Arms Trade Treaty vote at the United Nations on 2 April, when on 11 April, Foreign Secretary William Hague and the 7...

Our Business and Human Rights Advisor Paul Eagle reflects on a landmark ruling by the India Supreme Court which puts the decision about whether or not Vedanta can open a mine into the hands of the local Indigenous community. After many...

I am pinching myself because I can hardly believe it is finally time to write these words, but for the first time ever (excuse the shouting): THE WORLD HAS GOT AN ARMS TRADE TREATY!! [cue lots of jumping around, yelping and hugging]...

Today will be much the same as yesterday for Albert Woodfox. And yesterday will have been much the same as thousands of days before that. At least 23 hours of Albert’s day will be spent alone, in a cell measuring 2 x 3 metres. For the...