Global Voices

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...

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified US government documents to the website WikiLeaks. Why did you decide to leak documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? These documents were important...

When a man’s severed head turns up in Manila Bay with three gunshots through the cranium, one would reasonably expect the authorities to fast-track the investigation of such a grisly crime. But justice for the victim and the family...

Earlier this week, many people around the world waited with bated breath for a grand jury’s decision in a case where a police officer shot dead an unarmed young black man on the street . While the 9 August shooting of Michael Brown...

Nearly three months have passed since the latest conflict came to an end, but the piles of rubble and empty shells of family homes in Gaza serve as painful reminders of the death and destruction that resulted from Israel’s latest...

Since the first cases of Ebola were reported in March, life in Sierra Leone has changed beyond recognition. So far, the World Health Organization has confirmed more than 5,200 Ebola cases in Sierra Leone alone and more than 13,700...

Unlike nearby villages recently captured by the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government from the armed group calling itself Islamic State, not a single villager has returned to Barzanke. As I go from house to house, it...

When I was growing up, I was told that abortion was illegal. In school, you were taught about abortion from a religious perspective – that abortion is wrong. At first, I believed this. But I’ve had friends who got pregnant after they...