Global Voices

By Waleed Abu al-Khair, currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for defending human rights. He wrote this post before he was imprisoned in July 2014. Writing while waiting to go to prison is like bidding your loved ones farewell before...

Written by Khairunissa Dhala from Amnesty's refugee and migrants team. Having lost their home while battling serious illness, a family of refugees from Syria has started a new, peaceful life after being resettled in the UK. 'We were...

In March, Phyoe Phyoe Aung was arrested and imprisoned for helping to organise student protests in Burma. Just this week, her husband Lin Htet Naing was also imprisoned, after nearly eight months in hiding, for his part in organising...

Aster Fissehatsion has been missing for 14 years. She was arrested in 2001 after signing an open letter calling for democratic reforms. Here her son Ibrahim Mahmoud Ahmed Sherifo talks of the years without his mother and his continued...

Bheki Makhubu, a Swaziland editor and prisoner of conscience, was freed on 30 June after being jailed alongside human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko. His wife Fikile spoke to us after his release about her relief, and the pain of having...

When I called my mother from prison to tell her I’d been pardoned after 10 years in jail, she fainted. I was told they had to pour water on her to revive her. Later, when she saw me for the first time after all those years in jail, she...

By Ensaf Haidar, wife of jailed blogger Raif Badawi By now, millions of people around the world have come to know my husband Raif Badawi’s name. All of this attention is encouraging, but the reasons why have shocked me to my core. Raif...

Amnesty Mexico shows the difference it makes if you put primary school students in the director’s chair, rather than sit them passive in the audience. They set up a Short Film Festival on Gender Equality to encourage school students to...

The oil company Shell was recently forced to pay £55 million in compensation to people in Bodo, Nigeria, after their lives were devastated by two massive oil spills in 2008. One of them is Pastor Christian Lekoya Kpandei, 53 - a 'born...

I’ve just returned from meeting with shipwreck survivors, the coastguard and officials in Lampedusa – the Italian island on the frontline of the crisis in the Mediterranean Sea. It was incredibly harrowing but, as always, I was truly...

More than a thousand people drowned trying to reach Europe by boat last week. The survivors of the tragedies have harrowing stories to tell. Ali spoke to our staff in a reception centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa. He had just...

Cast in bronze outside the national football stadium that bears his name in Baku, Tofiq Bahramov’s statue stands with one arm bent across his chest and the other outstretched to the side, forever signalling for a free kick. Better...

There’s a superstitious part of me, and a worried part of me. And both parts of me feared last Saturday: it marked thirteen years since Shaker Aamer was airlifted to Guantanamo. My fear is that in Congress, the fear-mongers who are...

I wanted to thank all of you so very much for your actions of support and solidarity. I understand that over 200,000 actions were taken [for me] - that’s absolutely incredible! I am also so grateful for all the heartfelt support from...

Written by Jason D. Wright, Esq., a US Army veteran and human rights advocate. Disclaimer: The following article reflects the opinions of Jason Wright and not Amnesty International. The opening principles of the Universal Declaration...

'Tonight I can write the saddest lines,' goes the opening of the Pablo Neruda poem. But I have to admit, it’s very tough to type these words now. As a journalist, I’m struggling to put the proverbial pen to paper in an attempt to...