Country specialists
- Latest
- Archive
By Hassatou Sambou, Country Coordinator for Senegal, Sierra Leone and Mauritania Today, the world will celebrate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Yes, because even though we’re in 2015, 35% of women...
Written by James Lovatt, Country Coordinator for Burma Sunday was a bit of an odd day. As a huge number of citizens in Burma were starting their celebrations from a likely NLD victory, Amnesty UK had a number of our activists...
In Iran, followers of the Baha’i faith face discrimination, arrest and arbitrary detention, some have even been executed because of their religion. Although founded in 1863, the country's constitution does not recognise and protect the...
Written by Lucy Barnett, Country Coordinator for Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Teachers… you remember the ones who bored you to tears, the ones who spoke like drones and seemingly had no passion for their subject. The ones you...
In May, human rights defender Narges Mohammadi was arrested in Iran. Though she has poor health and doctors have said that she is too ill to be in jail, she remains at Tehran’s Evin Prison. On 14 July, I joined rights activists and...
Ibrahim was born in the 1980s in 'The Field' – the part of Eritrea that had been 'liberated' by those fighting for the independence of the country, from the murderous regime of Mengistu Hailemariam, dictator of Ethiopia. Many young...
Torture has written some of the bloodiest lines of history. The heretic’s fork, the Judas cradle and other medieval devices might be museum curios now, but Amnesty has evidence of torture in 141 countries during the last five years. It...
On Saturday I stood on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields to remember the over 8000 men and boys who were killed in the Srebrenica genocide twenty years ago. We remembered them and the thousands more people ‘ disappeared ’ off the...
To reach the Amnesty garden that celebrated human rights since Magna Carta at last week’s Hampton Court Flower Show, the crowd first had to flow past the Winnie the Pooh and then the Mad Hatters Tea Party gardens. The Pooh garden...
In early May, Narges Mohammadi, a distinguished human rights defender who is well-known within Iran and beyond, was arrested at her home. Security forces took her to Tehran's Evin Prison. Behind bars her health is rapidly deteriorating...
This blog is by Noa Kleinman who has recently retired as North America Country Coordinator, after 20 years. Indigenous women and girls in Canada are being murdered and disappeared at such a high rate that it amounts to a national human...
By Lucy Barnett, Country Coordinator – Bahrain and United Arab Emirates Friday marks the International Day of Families. The theme this year is ‘men in charge? Gender equality and children’s rights in contemporary families’ and it got...
María is tired of being forced to move from place to place. The 54-year-old adjusts her colourful headscarf and sighs heavily. She is one of Colombia’s six million forcibly displaced people. For years María called El Tamarindo home...
Written by Barbara Lodge, Country Coordinator for Turkey If Prime Minister Thatcher had had the thin skin of Turkey’s President Erdoğan, political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe would have been in and out of prison. Despite cartooning her as...
From Ian McGarr, our Country Coordinator on Colombia. As the decade long armed conflict has raged between government forces, paramilitary organisation and guerrilla groups in Colombia, civilians have borne the brunt. During this time...
Guest blogger Alex Jackson is our country expert on Eritrea and Somalia. The late nineties and early noughties were momentous years. I was living in Eritrea, and war with Ethiopia had consumed the country. Our passion for peace and...
The Indigenous people of the Chittagong Hills (CHT) are forbidden to talk to outsiders without security forces being present according to a new Bangladesh Government directive. ‘Outsiders’ includes people of their own country as well...
Cupid is especially busy on Valentine’s Day, but his methods leave much to chance. The mischievous love god blindfolds himself before firing his arrow through a new lover’s heart. An indiscriminate approach, but those arrows are pretty...
President Mugabe, his wife Grace and family are on holiday. As usual, they are spending time in Singapore in some luxury. Back home Zimbabweans are struggling to keep body and soul together . Businesses have closed at a rate of knots...
Who saw that coming? Last month, Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro appeared on TV, in carefully orchestrated, simultaneous broadcasts, to announce a prisoner swap. This was the start of a new era of rapprochement after more than...