Amnesty is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for human rights. Its work is based on careful research and on the standards agreed by the international community.

Amnesty International UK is one of more than 50 nationally organised sections that make up the Amnesty International worldwide movement. 

Amnesty International UK members elect a national board to represent them at the International Council Meeting. This is a gathering of representatives of all sections, which meets every two years to take the major policy decisions of the movement.

Amnesty works independently and impartially to promote respect for all the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It concentrates on ending abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination.

We campaign for international recognition of human rights issues. This takes the form of:

• Promotion of awareness through various means including public events, fundraising activities and multimedia outreach
• Opposing specific abuses of human rights through a programme of research and action

Amnesty is based on the belief that individuals working together in international solidarity can bring about real change.

In a world where those with power sometimes act with callous disregard for human suffering, this may seem hopelessly optimistic.

However, since 1961 Amnesty has made appeals on behalf of thousands of individual victims of human rights abuses and has established a concrete record of achievement over the years.

Amnesty is a membership organisation that relies on the active participation of its members to achieve its goals. We encourage all people who support our objectives and principles to become members and take action on our campaigns.

As a member you can act individually and add another voice to our campaigns, or join a group or network. Alternatively, you can donate, fundraise, buy something or give as you spend.

Amnesty is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion.

To ensure our independence, we do not seek or accept money from governments or political parties for our work in documenting and campaigning against human rights abuses.

Our funding depends on the contributions of our worldwide membership and fundraising activities.

To safeguard the independence of the organisation, all contributors are strictly controlled by guidelines laid down by the International Council. Find out more about our finances.

At the latest count, there were more than 1.8 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories in every region of the world.

The International Secretariat presides over 50 sections, including Amnesty International UK, which coordinate and develop campaign activities within a country.

Each section carries out Country Action Programmes (CAPs) in conjunction with the International Secretariat to prevent or oppose human rights abuses in specified countries.

A country-specific At Risk of Crisis Register is issued by the International Secretariat every three months, and allocates key sections for each crisis alert.

Amnesty does not limit its work to specific countries, whenever we establish that action is needed to protect people whose rights have been abused, we mobilise our membership.

Each year, Amnesty produces hundreds of reports covering many different countries and issues based on thorough research and analysis by experts at the International Secretariat.

We also publish a comprehensive annual report covering developments in human rights in 150 countries.

Amnesty selects campaigning tasks in consultation with the International Secretariat. Once we have chosen our campaigning tasks and prepared the material, we send the information to the groups, networks and supporters that, in our judgement, will create the most pressure.

If you have a question about Amnesty that is not shown here, please email it to webdeveloper@amnesty.org.uk and we will endeavour to answer you as soon as possible.

You can log into your My Amnesty account by entering your details into the My Amnesty badge located in the top right hand corner of every page on the website.

• At the top of the right hand side of the homepage there is a bright pink box entitled 'MyAmnesty' 
  
• Enter your login details (the email address you registered with and your password) into the fields provided on this box
• Click 'login', located directly below the email and password fields
• This box will change, confirming that you're logged in.
  
• To edit your profile,  click on 'edit profile' located at the bottom of the logged in My Amnesty box
• This will take you to your profile details where you can modify your email address and password.

Lost your old password? If you have forgotten your existing password, simply click on the MyAmnesty login button and then the 'Forgotten your password?' link next to the password field. You will be asked to enter your email address.

You will then be sent a email containing a link. Clicking on the link will take you directly into MyAmnesty where you can enter a new password.

Wherever possible we try and include a full set of contact details for the person we would like you to send your appeals to.

Ideally this will include their name and address, a fax number and an email address.

However, unfortunately it is not always possible to get all this information. While we will always provide at least a postal address, fax numbers and email addresses can be harder to obtain or stop working abruptly.

If you spot a fax or email address which is wrong or has stopped working please let us know via webdeveloper@amnesty.org.uk

Flickr step-by-step
There are three stages to getting your images on the Amnesty Flickr Group.

A. Sign up to Flickr
1. You need a Yahoo! ID, to get one go to Yahoo.com and fill in the form. If you already have one, go directly to flickr.com. and sign in.
2. On completion of the form click 'continue to yahoo!' and choose your 'Flickr screen name' - this is the name that the public will see when they enter your Flickr account, and the name that will appear next to the photographs you add to the Amnesty group.
3. Click the 'create new account' button.
4. This takes you to a page on Flickr that will help you set up your profile. Here you can upload your images, including those that you do not want to add to the Amnesty group, explore other groups, look at other people's photos and make some friends.

B. Join the Amnesty UK group:
1. Go to www.flickr.com/groups/amnestyuk, and click the 'join this group' link
2. Read the group rules and, if you agree with them, join
3. Once you are signed up you can join the discussion and comment on other people's images, but you have to return to your own Flickr profile in order to add images to the group pool

C. Add your images to the Amnesty group pool:
1. Go to your Flickr account
2. Click on an image
3. Click the 'send to group' icon which is above the photograph
4. Select Amnesty UK from the list of groups.

RSS/XML feeds are an information-sharing tool designed to give you immediate access to new web entries that are of interest.

Feeds are becoming an increasingly popular way for news providers to share their information.  The Amnesty feeds allow you to stay up to date with with Amnesty news and actions.

When used website to website, feeds are a file that one can download from another in order to display mutually relevant material. Many websites now offer feeds, and they are increasingly being used by individuals and journalists as a way to access targeted information instantly. 

To subscribe, you will need a news reader/aggregator or other similar device.  You can also use this feed to display amnesty.org.uk on your site.

How do I get a news reader? 

News readers are designed to source and display news from thousands of different websites. You personalise this service by selecting RSS feeds from websites that are of interest.

Some readers are browser-based, and others are downloadable applications. Like a web-based email provider, browser-based news feeds allow you to read your feeds from any computer, while downloadable applications only allow you to view updates on your main computer.

Windows:
The latest Internet Explorer - version 7 - comes with a panel to organise your feeds and blogs and favourites, so you have no need to download another program or use another browser-based alternative.  However those using version 6 or earlier, or a different browser such as Netscape, Firefox or Opera, can try:
Newz Crawler
FeedDemon
Awasu
Netvibes

Mac OS X:
Newsfire
NetNewsWire

Web:
Bloglines
My Yahoo!
Squeet
NewsGator

Once you have a news reader: subscribing to a feed

You can subscribe to an RSS/XML feed in a number of ways, including:

• Drag the button into your News Reader
• Drag the URL of the RSS/XML feed into your News Reader
• Cut and paste the URL of the feed into your News Reader

Subscribe to a feed

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