Country specialists

In 1972, the photograph of nine year old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running naked, screaming in pain from burns, showed millions the dire effect of napalm bombing and helped change history. After a decade of drownings in the Mediterranean, the...

On 14 August 2010, Félix Guzmán went out to work, as he did every day, in the fields of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in north-western Colombia. At about 9.30 a.m. he was approached by armed men wearing paramilitary...

The case of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students in Mexico is as shocking as it is baffling. Nearly two years ago, students from a teachers’ training college in Mexico’s southwestern state of Guerrero were hauled off buses in...

A staggering 30,000 people ‘ disappeared ’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) during the 1992-95 armed conflict. More than 21 years later, 8000 people are still missing. I struggle to comprehend these numbers let alone the hundreds of...

As the number of military personnel deployed to fight Boko Haram in the Far North Region of Cameroon has increased, the number of people detained without trial on suspicion of supporting the armed group has gone up, as well. Families...

It has been 20 years since Kalpana Chakma was kidnapped by the state – taken from her home in Rangamati in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts by a group of plain-clothed security personnel believed to have been from a nearby army camp...

Anyone who has been passingly engaged in Indonesia might have noticed that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo doesn’t have much respect for human rights. Recently four executions took place with a further 10 people at imminent risk of...

Twenty-one years ago, 8372 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed in the worst crime committed on European soil since the Second World War. The journey to justice The Srebrenica genocide was part of a three year war characterised by...

This blog is written by Vava Tampa, a native of Congo and founder of the London based campaign group Save the Congo!. He is the Coordinator of #YellowSunday The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hasn’t been headline news recently, but...

This blog is written by Richard Williams, our voluntary Country Coordinator for Turkey. If you are at all squeamish I do not recommend that you view this distressing video It shows horrific images of the near-fatal injuries inflicted...

You can’t entirely be. If you search on the internet, you will probably find that the lithium-ion battery, the thing that powers your laptop, tablet or smartphone and enables you to surf for hours, contains cobalt. If you search a...

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...