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May 20 2015 6:31PM
Nigerian community waits for oil spill clean up

You can clearly see, and smell, the oil that pollutes the waterways near Bodo, as well as the destruction it has caused to the mangrove trees lining the shore. But what shocked me most was the silence of the place. As Africa’s most...

May 15 2015 4:42PM
Torturing a 10-year-old rape victim

Every now and then there comes along a case that seems too tragic to comprehend- where cruelty from one individual to another is compounded and amplified by a callous governmental response. That is how I feel about the case of a 10...

May 11 2015 11:10AM
Families are stronger than cages

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...

Apr 30 2015 1:08PM
Looking for a place to call home: forced evictions in Colombia

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...

Apr 27 2015 5:52PM
Surviving a shipwreck in the Mediterranean: Ali’s journey

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...

Apr 21 2015 6:20PM
Free speech in Turkey is in crisis. Take urgent action.

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...

Apr 15 2015 4:10PM
Our chance to lobby the US Embassy: campaigning for the rights of the child

Our journey of campaigning for the US to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child began when our youth group leader explained to us what the convention was, and how it protects children’s rights. We had never heard of the...

Mar 30 2015 1:24PM
MPs are no more. Long live the PPC!

By Laura Trevelyan, Amnesty's Advocacy Coordinator - Outreach. They say a week is a long time in politics but maybe today’s politicians can take comfort from the fact that 500 years after his death at Bosworth field Richard III’s...

Mar 20 2015 5:12PM
Truth and justice ‘come dropping slow’ – in memory of Gerry McKerr

By Kartik Raj, EU Campaigner/Researcher at Amnesty International. Gerry McKerr, one of the “Hooded Men” – a name now used to describe the group of detainees subjected to the UK security forces’ infamous “Five Techniques” of...

Mar 11 2015 12:00AM
Land and Conflict in Colombia

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...

Mar 9 2015 6:14PM
'I felt the shadow of execution over my head': A letter from Iran's death row

"It is all finished," the guard said. On the other side of the thick brick wall of Iran's Raja'i Shahr prison, the bodies of six Sunni men from Iran’s Kurdish minority were hanging from nooses. Hamed Ahmadi, Jahangir Dehghani, Jamshid...

Mar 3 2015 4:31PM
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Take action for prisoners of conscience in Eritrea

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...

Feb 24 2015 12:42PM
Five reasons to care about mass surveillance

'Every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass, friend you keep, article you write, site you visit… is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are...

Feb 20 2015 4:35PM
1861 and All That - updating Northern Ireland's abortion law

Guest blog from Stephanie Weir, a sixth-former from Portadown College who has been on work experience with Amnesty International in Belfast this week. There is no denying that abortion is a complex issue, but forcing a woman to...

Feb 18 2015 1:11PM
3 must-watch videos, 13 lost years: Shaker's story

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...

Feb 6 2015 3:05PM
A union of Pride in the face of oppression

For the UK’s LGBTI community, last year marked a monumental step forward in the fight for equality – the legalisation of same-sex marriage. David Cameron cited its introduction as one of his proudest achievements of 2014. For once, I’m...

Jan 30 2015 12:54PM
Why I'm running the London Marathon for Amnesty and Shaker Aamer

For human rights campaigners anniversaries are crucial in any campaign – they’re a key moment to highlight the suffering of an individual held in often the most grotesque circumstances. Today is no different. It is my 50th birthday...

Jan 27 2015 12:20PM
UK election: 100 days to go

And so it begins. In 100 days the country will go to the polls and decide who will govern the UK for the next five years. The main thing I hear people talking about is uncertainty about the result. Even my friends who normally...

Jan 17 2015 10:31AM
The story behind the Boko Haram satellite images

This week we released satellite images that show the impact of a horrific Boko Haram attack in northeast Nigeria last week. The images, combined with several testimonies, provide shocking evidence of how the conflict is dramatically...

Jan 13 2015 4:37PM
Zimbabwe: plus ca change...

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...

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