Country specialists

'It’s not Europe. It’s a bit different… it’s a war here'. This is what a commander of the Aidar volunteer battalion told Amnesty earlier this year . War, or any full blown armed conflict as Ukraine is experiencing despite the recent...

On 7 August, Gao Zhisheng, a prominent human rights lawyer often referred to as the ‘conscience of China’ was released from prison. Released, but not yet free, his future remains uncertain: his political rights continue to be withheld...

For over 150 years between its independence from Spain and the mid-1980s, Bolivia was characterised by a history of coups, counter-coups and the occasional revolution. Since 1985, however, despite various outbreaks of social unrest...

With tensions high in Israel, this is a particularly difficult time to be a conscientious objector in a country where military service is compulsory for almost all of its young men and women. Omar Saad, a Druze viola player from...

Iran’s hardline judiciary is getting very good at silencing its critics. Over the last decade, but especially following the 2009 presidential election when the authorities tightened restrictions on free speech and access to information...

Ángel Amílcar Colón Quevedo's eight-year-old son was dying of cancer. Ángel is a black Honduran, a member of the downtrodden Garifuna community. In desperate hope of earning money for a cure for his child, Ángel tried to get to the...

Aspiring writers might dream of being an award-winning journalist with access to a wealth of captivating stories on crime, corruption and political intrigue. But what’s the reality in countries where freedom of speech is under serious...

ISIS, armed groups and militias, and Iraqi Government forces have committed war crimes and gross abuses of human rights in the conflict spreading across Iraq. Northern Iraq: Civilians in the Line of Fire is a new briefing by Amnesty...

On 11 June, Paraguay’s President Cartes signed into law an Expropriation Bill that returns more than 55 square miles of traditional land to the Sawhoyamaxa people – an area about the size of Cardiff. It’s hopefully the end of a...

Just the news I’d been hoping for! Agnes Uwimana Nkusi was released three weeks earlier than expected on 18 June. In her working life, she was the editor of the tabloid newspaper Umurabyo but I was thinking joyfully about her personal...

Twitter is everywhere these days and everyone seems to be tweeting - compressing our lives into short updates to share with the world. So what could be more ‘now’ than a twitter trial? I don’t mean trial by twitter of course, but...

Paraguay’s Senate have voted to support an Expropriation Bill that could prove a landmark in the struggle of the country’s indigenous communities to gain recognition of their rights to their ancestral lands. Amnesty International has...

World Press Freedom Day on 3 May spotlights Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to...

Last week, Ban Ki Moon presented his second report on the ‘implementation of Security Council Resolution 2139’ – the resolution calling on all sides in Syria to allow immediate humanitarian access to crisis areas such as Yarmouk...

Ahead of the Indonesian elections this month we joined TAPOL, Survival International and Down to Earth outside the Indonesian Embassy to call for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of conscience imprisoned solely for...

In Yarmouk just a few years ago you could never go hungry. A place which began as a Palestinian refugee camp in 1948 developed into a bustling commercial hub. Now, it’s no longer a sanctuary but the scene of some of the worst...

Today's World Book Day celebrates and encourages reading. What will you pick up today? Some Shakespeare, a classic fairy tale such as Puss in Boots perhaps, or something weightier like Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment ? For Guantánamo...

Huber Matos, who was Amnesty’s first Cuban prisoner of conscience, has died aged 95. Matos was a schoolteacher who became an army commander in the revolutionary forces fighting to overthrow the Batista government. However, he disagreed...

The 2013 Human Rights Report on Indigenous people of Bangladesh has been published by the Kapaeeng Foundation, with the support of Oxfam and the European Union. The report shows that, in 2013, the number of incidents of human rights...

“We must be careful today. Last time, the police used tear gas and we had to run.” This was my interpreter’s warning as we walked to the court in Ankara to observe the third hearing of a trial for Amnesty in December 2013. The...