Amnesty International

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Amnesty International

• Feng Chong We Feng Weidong
• Gao Chuanyu Gideon Purwono
• Goh Id Gordon Goh

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Content Page

• Introduction
• Difficulties Amnesty International faces
• Efforts of Amnesty International
• Opinion on Death Penalty
• Detriments of Leaving human rights unchecked
• Suggestions

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Introduction
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Amnesty International

• Campaign for internationally recognized human
  rights to be respected and protected for
  everyone.
• Human rights abuses are the concern of people.
• Inspired by hope for a better world

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Mission

• To Conduct research and generate action to
  prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and
  to demand justice  for those whose rights have
  been violated

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Aims
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Means of promoting Human Rights

• Exert influence on governments, political bodies,
  companies and intergovernmental groups.
• Mobilising public pressure through mass
  demonstrations, vigils and direct lobbying as
  well as online and offline campaigning.
• Work to improve peoples lives through
  campaigning and international solidarity.

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Why we chose amnesty

• The organisation was awarded the 1977 Nobel Peace
  Prize for its "campaign against torture" and
  the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human
  Rights in 1978.
• Amnesty has the longest history and broadest name
  recognition, and "is believed by many to set
  standards for the movement as a whole."
• Independent of any government, political
  ideology, economic interest or religion

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• Democratic and self-governing
• Financially self-sufficient, thanks to the
  generous support of donations provided by
  individual members and supporters
• they do not support or oppose any government or
  political system and neither do they necessarily
  support or oppose the views of the
  victims/survivors or human rights defenders whose
  rights they seek to protect.

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Difficulties Amnesty International faces
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Difficulty AI faces

• Unable to present accurate research or
  information or evaluation or help countries that
  deny access to them.
• If Amnesty International is denied official
  access to a country, research teams may have to
  rely on sources of information outside the
  country, including news media reports, experts,
  refugees, diplomatic representatives and human
  rights defenders. 

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Difficulty AI faces

• The reports they give and evaluations are biased
  in that they report more on countries that are
  democratic and open and countries that are closed
  are unable to be helped.
• They get complaints from countries that they are
  giving biased reports and are ideologically
  biased. For example china, Vietnam, usa
  complained that their reports biased.

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Efforts of Amnesty International
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Aim of Amnesty International

• Amnesty International's vision is of a world in
  which every person enjoys all of the human rights
  enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
  Rights.
• Their mission is to undertake research and action
  focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of
  the rights to physical and mental integrity,
  freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom
  from discrimination, within the context of our
  work to promote all human rights.

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What is the Problem?

• Amnesty international has been trying to make
  Human Rights universal.
• The problem is that there are too many challenges
  facing the issue currently.
• There are many countries that have agreed to only
  part of the International declaration of Human
  Rights and not to the whole declaration.

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What is the Problem?

• Difficult to convince every single country to
  agree to the entire declaration.
• Each country has its own moral value system,
  culture and different things that can be
  considered extreme and as taboo in other
  countries might be perfectly normal and fine to
  the country in which the practice originated.

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What are the Points of View?

• Amnesty believes that all their campaigning and
  research is fact based. Among the many activities
  they carry out, they
• send experts to talk with victims
• observe trials
• interview local officials
• liaise with human rights activists
• monitor global and local media
• publish detailed reports
• inform the news media
• publicize our concerns in documents, leaflets,
  posters, advertisements, newsletters and websites

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Amnesty

• They also help stop human rights abuses by
  mobilizing the public to put pressure on
  governments, armed political groups, companies
  and intergovernmental bodies via
• public demonstrations
• vigils
• letter-writing campaigns
• human rights education
• awareness-raising concerts
• direct lobbying
• targeted appeals
• email petitions and other online actions
• partnerships with local campaigning groups
• community activities
• co-operation with student groups

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Amnesty

• Amnestys Sources come from
• prisoners and others suffering other human rights
  abuses and their representatives
• survivors of abuse and their families
• lawyers and journalists
• refugees
• diplomats
• religious bodies and community workers
• humanitarian agencies and other human rights
  organizations
• human rights defenders

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Amnesty

• They monitor newspapers, websites and other media
  outlets. Amnesty International often sends
  fact-finding missions to assess the situation on
  the spot.
• If Amnesty International is denied official
  access to a country, research teams may have to
  rely on sources of information outside the
  country, including news media reports, experts,
  refugees, diplomatic representatives and human
  rights defenders. 

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Amnesty

• Before any statement, publication or report is
  issued, its text is subject to close review to
  ensure it is factually accurate, politically
  impartial and consistent with Amnesty
  International's mission. 
• When Amnesty International deals with allegations
  rather than undisputed facts, it makes this clear
  in its findings and may call for an
  investigation. 

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Amnesty

• If Amnesty International makes a mistake, it
  issues a correction.
• As a result, Amnesty International's research is
  recognized globally for its reliability. They
  are consulted widely including by governments,
  intergovernmental organizations, journalists,
  scholars and other human rights organizations and
  campaigning groups.

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Criticism

• However, Amnesty is also criticised in two main
  ways, where it suffers from accusations of
  selection bias and ideological bias.
• From Amnestys point of view, AI admits to
  reporting disproportionately on relatively more
  democratic and open countries, arguing that its
  intentions is not to produce a range of reports
  which statistically represents the worlds human
  rights abuses, but rather to apply pressure of
  public opinion to encourage improvements.

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• Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of
  people who campaign for human rights. Our work is
  based on careful research and on the standards
  agreed by the international community. We are
  independent of any government, political
  ideology, economic interest or religion.
• Amnesty International mobilizes volunteer
  activists - people who give freely of their time
  and energy in solidarity with those whose rights
  have been abused. We have more than one million
  members, supporters and subscribers in over 140
  countries. We come from all walks of life, with
  widely different political and religious views,
  united by our determination to work for a world
  where everyone enjoys human rights.

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• Amnesty International's vision is of a world in
  which every person enjoys all of the human rights
  enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human
  Rights and other international human rights
  standards.
• Our mission is to undertake research and action
  focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of
  the rights to physical and mental integrity,
  freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom
  from discrimination, within the context of our
  work to promote all human rights.

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Opinion on Death Penalty
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Views on the death penalty

• opposes it regardless of the nature of the crime,
  the characteristics of the offender, or the
  method used by the state to kill the prisoner
• ultimate denial of human rights
• cold-blooded killing of a human being by the
  state in the name of justice
• violates the right to life as proclaimed in the
  Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading
  punishment

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Views on the death penalty

• no special deterrent effect on crime
• denies the possibility of rehabilitation and
  reconciliation
• prolongs the suffering of the murder victims
  family, and extends that suffering to the
  relatives of the condemned prisoner
• executions are a symptom of a culture of violence
  rather than a solution to it
• By executing a person the state commits a
  premeditated
• killing and shows a similar readiness to use
  physical violence as the criminal

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Belarus

• the last country in Europe that is still carrying
  out executions
• estimates that as many as 400 people may have
  been executed since Belarus gained its
  independence in 1991

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Issue

• torture and ill-treatment are used to extract
  confessions
• may not have access to effective appeal
  mechanisms
• inherently cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of
  the death penalty is compounded for death row
  prisoners and their relatives by the secrecy
  surrounding the death penalty

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Condemnation

• the Secretary General of the Council of Europe,
  Terry Davis
• I am upset by an insistent intention of the
  Belarusian authorities to isolate their country
  from Europe.
• By these death sentences they seem to be proud
  of defying human values common for other European
  countries.

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Actions taken

• European Union has also made abolition of the
  death penalty one of the conditions for closer
  relations with Belarus
• the European Commission released a document
  offering a full partnership to Belarus as part of
  the European Neighbourhood Policy, provided that
  Belarus takes convincing steps towards
  democratisation, respect for human rights and the
  rule of law.

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Criticism

• Regarding ideological bias, many governments
  subject to critical AI reports, including those
  of China, the Democratic republic of Congo,
  Israel, Russia, South Korea, the United States,
  and Vietnam have defended themselves by accusing
  AI of one-sided reporting or of a failure to
  treat threats to security as a mitigating factor.
  Criticism has also come from companies, such as
  Total. The Catholic Church has also criticised
  Amnesty for its stance on Abortion.
• Our research teams focusing on particular
  countries and themes investigate reports of human
  rights abuses, cross checking and corroborating
  information from a wide variety of sources and
  contacts. 

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Leaving human rights unchecked
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Detriments

•  In a bid to keep power over a group, many
  political institutions have resorted to the
  violation of certain human rights so as to
  maintain their sphere of influence.
• Case Study to keep control over Iraq, Saddam
  Hussein resorted to the ethnic cleansing (i.e.
  genocide) of not just the ethnic Kurds whom he
  viewed as a long term threat to Iraqs survival
• But also the Shiite Muslims that posed as a
  threat to the legitimacy of the rule of the Sunni
  Baath Party.
• Such violations like the Halabja poison gas
  massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people,
  just to show the high human cost of such
  violations.
• Extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust during
  Hitlers reign, otherwise known as the Holocaust,
  where it is estimated that 6,000,000 Jews were
  slain in a period of just 6 years.

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Detriments

•  People who lack the capacity to defend their
  rights will be dealt with a severe treatment that
  infringes such rights.
• Case study the execution of nine men in Sudan.
• Though they were convicted of the murder, it is
  known that the confessions were extracted under
  torture, and that there was a slight chance that
  these men were really innocent.
• However, since they have little capacity to
  defend their rights, their rights to a fair trial
  were violated and hence they were executed
  without receiving a second verdict.
• Should human rights go unchecked, many who are
  powerless to defend these rights would be subject
  to violations that they cannot stand against.

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Suggestions
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Educating students about human rights

• Education about human rights must become part of
  general public education
• Technical and financial assistance should be
  provided to increase knowledge about human rights
• Research institutes and schools should train
  lawyers and judges who possess a strong sense of
  justice

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• Case Study In Hwa Chong, students are required
  to study about human rights and come up with
  quality presentations and seminars, thereby
  increasing their knowledge about human rights
  and boosting their sense of justice
• The Ministry of Education should make this topic
  compulsory for all other schools as well judging
  from its effectiveness in Hwa Chong

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Encouraging students to speak up about
mistreatment from teachers

• Allowing teachers to mistreat students will
  evolve into the acceptance of mistreatment among
  students which might make them turn a blind eye
  to human rights abuse in future
• Students should thus be encouraged to speak up
  about mistreatment from teachers such as
  excessive homework and unreasonable deadlines and
  demand for fair treatment

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• Students will thus learn to uphold their rights
  as students, and in the long run, to uphold their
  rights as humans, which are fundamental and
  inalienable