Rights and Realities

By Peter Frankental, our Business and Human Rights Programme Director In a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, the Australian government has created an island of despair, where refugees fleeing persecution are trapped and live in...

By Steve Valdez-Symonds, Programme Director - Refugee and Migrant Rights Today Amnesty International and Student Action for Refugees (STAR) have linked the Home Office and the Department for Education in a giant paper chain of united...

This blog was first published on inews.co.uk on 11 February 2017. When the Home Secretary announced this week that the government would end its scheme to bring lone child refugees already in Europe to the UK, she claimed it had to...

This week, we celebrated Justice Minister Oliver Heald QC finally announcing a timetable for the long-awaited review of the drastic cuts the coalition made to legal aid in 2013. So far, so dry (and it was – it’s January). But please...

On 20 January 2017, Donald J Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. Even before becoming president-elect, his rhetoric on immigration – and the encouragement this has given to extremists...

It’s a sad state of affairs when companies, confronted with allegations of slavery in their supply chains, admit to it with little sense of shame. They express concern, tell us it’s unacceptable and that they’re doing everything they...

Over recent days, the relationship between the French and UK governments has been strained by renewed disagreement over who should take responsibility for children at Calais. The two governments have once more effectively abandoned...

Children who have fled from conflict zones and brutal regimes are finally being reunited with family in the UK. This should be a cause for celebration. Many have been living in squalor at risk from traffickers and abusers for months...

Mo Farah arguably just became the UK’s greatest ever Olympian. When he led the field across the line on Sunday, he completed a sensational back-to-back double – winning both 5,000 and 10,000 metre golds at London 2012 and Rio 2016. Of...

Written by Steve Symonds, Amnesty UK's Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme Director The power to detain is a long-standing Home Office obsession. For several years, the number of people detained has increased even as the proportion of...

The Brexit referendum decision is now the cause of considerable fear and uncertainty among the many European citizens and their families living in the United Kingdom. The reported rise in hate crimes compounds the uncertainty on which...

IN or OUT that’s the question, but the debate before parliament today and the speech from the Home Secretary last week ventured to propose an altogether different Brexit: not from the EU, but from the European Convention on Human...

On Friday, the Kenyan government announced it intends to close its refugee camps. These camps host over 600,000 refugees – mostly in Kakuma and Dadaab, the latter being the world’s largest refugee camp. The announcement will bring much...

F1 World Management had an NCP complaint lodged against it for holding the F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain, where human rights abuses by the authorities are rife. The complaint was only partially accepted. It seems somewhat perverse that the...

‘Break the link’, they say, ‘limit the reach, ignore it, defy it’. There’s little love for the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) from the UK government at the moment. It makes me wonder whether our politicians have any...

Late on Thursday last week I was on the Eurostar heading back to London – to home, family and friends. I was tired, cold and hungry. And – so my partner tells me – a little bit smelly. I had spent the previous two days trudging through...

A few weeks ago, David Cameron delivered his Christmas message to the nation. He said: 'If there is one thing people want at Christmas, it’s the security of having the family around them and a home that is safe.' While the Christmas...

Denmark has just passed asylum laws to give authorities the power to search refugees and migrants, and take their cash and valuables. Under this mean-spirited new law, the Danish police will be able to search asylum seekers and seize...

The global Arms Trade Treaty came into force last Christmas Eve. In many ways a very familiar story of a miracle birth, heralded as a new chapter for humankind. One year on, though, and it’s already been broken. More shockingly still...

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni leaders, hanged by the Nigerian state after they spoke out against the government and campaigned against Shell’s operations in Nigeria’s Ogoniland...