Campaigns Blog

Last week a group of us from the office went to the premier of a documentary at the LSE called Beatrice Mtetwa and The Rule Of Law. Having already seen a short preview of the film the day before we knew we were in for a treat. Since...

On June 18 at Amnesty International UK, the Bassel Shehadeh Foundation was officially announced at a special screening of the documentary Syria through a Lens - The life and works of the film maker Bassel Shehadeh. Syria is probably...

Amnesty International UK recently hosted 16 leading activists from the Syrian Non Violence Movement (SNVM). They came for an intensive 2 day training session in our Human Rights Action Centre . The all day sessions were on “campaign...

On a recent visit to a camp near Atmeh, just inside Syria near the Turkish border, some 21,000 people were sheltering amid hellish conditions. Heavy rain leaked into the tents and had turned the clay soil into thick slippery mud, raw...

Update 17June: Following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Mozambique on Saturday, SADC recommended that the Zimbabwean government push the election date back to 14 August. Zimbabwe's constitutional court now...

This blog post is by Frances Webber, human rights lawyer, author of Borderline justice: the fight for refugee and migrant rights (Pluto, 2012), an honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society and vice-chair of the Institute of Race...

It’s been a historic week for Zimbabwe as President Mugabe signed a new constitution into law, a positive development that has the potential to increase ordinary Zimbabwean's enjoyment of their basic rights. The constitution paves the...

Mus’ab al-Hamadi, aged 32, is a well-known media activist and member of the Local Coordination Committee (LCC) in Hama. He has been heavily involved in collating information and posting videos of abuses committed by Syrian government...

Human rights breakthroughs are like buses, you wait ages for one… We’d barely recovered from the excitement of the Arms Trade Treaty vote at the United Nations on 2 April, when on 11 April, Foreign Secretary William Hague and the 7...

Our Business and Human Rights Advisor Paul Eagle reflects on a landmark ruling by the India Supreme Court which puts the decision about whether or not Vedanta can open a mine into the hands of the local Indigenous community. After many...

I am pinching myself because I can hardly believe it is finally time to write these words, but for the first time ever (excuse the shouting): THE WORLD HAS GOT AN ARMS TRADE TREATY!! [cue lots of jumping around, yelping and hugging]...

Today will be much the same as yesterday for Albert Woodfox. And yesterday will have been much the same as thousands of days before that. At least 23 hours of Albert’s day will be spent alone, in a cell measuring 2 x 3 metres. For the...

After two decades of campaigning for tighter controls on the arms trade, it has come down to two weeks. As you know, I’m in New York for the final crucial talks to agree an historic international Arms Trade Treaty . If successful, this...

Widney Brown, our Senior Director of International Law and Policy is with the Amnesty delegation at the UN, where states are negotiating the first ever Arms Trade Treaty. As the first week draws to a close at the Arms Trade Treaty...

Last July I spent a month as part of the Amnesty team lobbying governments as they strove to develop the world’s first global Arms Trade Treaty . That effort was delayed (but not defeated) when the US, followed by others asked for more...

For the past few weeks, as world leaders prepared to meet for talks to agree the world’s first international treaty to control the arms trade, thousands of you have been telling your MPs how much you care. You have been emailing...

Zimbabweans go to the polls today to vote on a new constitution. Today’s referendum is the culmination of nearly five years of political wrangling and many are seeing it as a litmus test for the presidential elections later in the year...

‘I heard my daughter Amani call her little brother and then I don’t remember anything. I don’t know how long I lay under the rubble before I was pulled out….The bodies of my wife and my daughter Amani were not found until six days...

The following is taken from our new briefing released 14 March 2013 Syria: Summary killings and other abuses by armed opposition groups. (PDF) In light of the abuses documented in this briefing, Amnesty International urges any state...

Syria: Two years on. Will there be a Human Rights Revolution? This new film from Amnesty International UK marks the second anniversary of the Syrian uprising / conflict and is released alongside two new briefings from Amnesty...