Amnesty Research Articles

Autonomy and Capacity: About Human Rights of Older Persons in Dependency Situations

Fil: Dabove, Maria Isolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina

‘Detainees Are Always One’s Achilles Heel’: The Struggle over the Scrutiny of Detention and Interrogation in Aden, 1963–1967

Colonial officials often complained about outside meddling in their campaign to defeat the insurgency in the South Arabian Federation from 1963 to 1967. This article focuses on relations between the High Commission in Aden, Whitehall departments, Amnesty International, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, asking how far these two external organizations managed to uncover detention and interrogation practices, and how officials in Aden responded to the scrutiny. Four main arguments are proposed. Firstly, detention and interrogation in Aden are contextualized within British counter-insurgency as a whole. Secondly, the push for outside interference in detention and interrogation immediately generated animosity between Whitehall and the High Commission. Thirdly, once ICRC visits were forced on Aden, officials learned to live with them. Inspections consistently found abuse centred around the interrogation facility. Finally, external pressures imposed procedural reforms on the detention and interrogation regime, but failed to stop abuses.

Posttraumatic stress disorder in Syrian refugees: A review.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross, a disaster is a sudden event that disrupts the way a community functions, causes devastating losses, and exceeds the community's ability to survive on its own resources (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, n.d.). It can be caused by natural events (i.e., earthquakes, floods, forest fires, etc.) or can be due to human behavior (i.e., industrial accidents, transport accidents, warfare, etc.). Warfare is perhaps one of the most devastating types of disaster, which has both acute and long-term effects. Even after the conflict is over, destruction to the environment, city and community infrastructure, food and resources shortage, displaced people, and outbreak of disease are problems that persist (De Goyet, Marti, & Osorio, 2006).The civil war in Syria began in March 2011 with the arrest and torture of prodemocracy protesters, which led to nationwide demands of the president's resignation (Rodgers, Gritten, Offer, & Asare, 2016). When rebel groups joined to fight against the government, the violence escalated into a civil war. According to the United Nations, 90,000 people had been killed in the conflict by June 2013 (United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, 2013). By August 2015, the number of casualties has exceeded 250,000. The already unstable conflict became even more chaotic and disastrous with the rise of ISIS. Other than the casualties of war, many crimes of war had also been reported (murder, torture, rape, kidnapping, etc.; Kareem, 2015). The use of bombs in highly populated urban areas to indiscriminately kill large numbers of civilians has also been reported. ISIS has also carried out chemical warfare, mass killings, and beheadings.The Syrian civil war has become an international crisis, with more than 12 million displaced people, half of them children. It is the largest migration of people since World War II. According to Amnesty International, Lebanon hosted 1.1 million refugees whereas 630,000 refugees settled in Jordan. Iraq, which is currently in a state of conflict, has welcomed 250,000 Syrians. Turkey received more than 1.9 million refugees (Amnesty International, 2015). Currently, refugees are travelling to Europe, with many migrating to Germany due to their open door policy to immigrants (Chu, 2015). As Syria's education, health care system, and other infrastructure and economy have collapsed, it may take years for the refugees to return home for hopes of a normal life.Most agencies and organizations are focused on providing for the primary needs of the refugees. These include basic necessities such as food, clothing, health care, and shelter. Refugees also require clean water and sanitation facilities. Most refugees live in abandoned buildings, sheds, garages, or tent settlements. Children need a safe environment and school, whereas the adults need employment. However, among all these the focus on mental health should also be a priority.Refugees have often experienced traumatic events that forced them to flee from their country of origin. This could include torture, unexpected and sudden loss of loved ones, sexual violence, and so forth. When they arrive at refugee camps, they can encounter more problems that can cause major psychological stress such as the lack of accommodation, basic necessities (i.e., clean water), and employment, to name a few. When the refugees finally get resettled into a foreign country, they often face the stresses of integrating into a new culture. Learning the new language and customs, along with the possibility of feeling as though they have to give up their own cultural identity, can prove stressful. Because of these stressful situations, refugees can have feelings of hopelessness, fear, anger, sadness, and so forth. They also commonly experience comorbid depression. Because refugees often witness and/or experience traumatic events and adversities, they are at particular risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). …

Amnesty International's Empty Promises: Decriminalization, Prostituted Women, and Sex Trafficking

Through a close examination of Amnesty International’s (Amnesty) own arguments and sources, this paper demonstrates that Amnesty’s proposal to decriminalize prostitution or “sex work” will harm those it claims to help. It concludes that the best available evidence indicates that decriminalization of prostitution would: increase sex trafficking, leave prostituted women or “sex workers” more vulnerable to violence, and reduce access to healthcare, protection, and services. Prostituted women primarily enter the industry at a young age, often suffering from a history of sexual and physical abuse, coming from marginalized and vulnerable communities, and driven by emotional and economic desperation. It is in this context that prostituted women “consent” to sell themselves in the extremely risky and dangerous sex industry. But instead of helping victims of sexual exploitation, Amnesty’s proposal will mostly benefit their abusers—the mostly male consumers and organizers of the sex industry. Amnesty reaches its flawed conclusion by consistently misreading the evidence, engaging in selective skepticism, and ignoring the troubling legal and practical implications of its own policy. Amnesty rejects decades of scholarly research on the basis of few sources—in one case from close to half a century ago—and sometimes misreads the reports they rely on. Amnesty consulted primarily with those most likely to support its position—the “sex workers”—rather than the sex trafficking victims, adult survivors of prostitution and the child victims of commercial sexual exploitation who are the most harmed by the sex industry.

Executed and Innocent

The goal of my research is to determine if during my own lifetime here in the United States our criminal justice system has executed someone innocent. My research will focus on death penalty cases since 1980 and only those in the United States. I will describe in detail many cases that are questionable and examine very closely if this injustice has indeed been carried out. I will introduce and describe the path in which an innocent defendant could be sentenced to death and executed.The parameter of this research is somewhat complicated by legal provisions and ongoing research. We find as technology progresses that things we considered historical fact are not as academically solid as we thought. There are many organizations, lawyers, researches and investigative media that have been looking into this topic for decades and will likely continue to uncover more and more information as time goes on. I am looking to present this is a black and white academic discipline but as we all know the imperfect system of justice that we have is consistently corrupted by the human error, sin and the color green.The specific parameters of this research will focus on the last 30 years on United States jurisprudence history and the justice that has been administered in our courts. Some of the crimes in the cases described herein will have happened before this time boundary but the executions were carried out recent enough to be relevant. This study will be restricted to the United States and its official boundaries to include all fifty states and territories. We are not talking about events in the remote reaches of colonial or medieval history but these events happened in the 1980s and the 1990s in a first world country with the same legal system that we have today. My primary sources in this project will be the many cases referenced and the laws discussed. The sources for this project will vary widely and include research and statements from relevant organizations including Amnesty International, United States Supreme Court, American Civil Liberties Union, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Catholic Church and various correctional departments. Other source material will include newspaper articles, published books and other media publications for which our conclusions will be based upon.Some of these organizations already mentioned and many media publications have already done some extensive research into this topic but it still remains relatively new in the greater view of academia. There are many reporters and articles detailed below of which have done years or research and a multitude of pages into a specific case or two. A few of the sources that are used below have even published works that have summaries of up to five cases while other organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups have on their own websites a page dedicated toward this type of research. Not all of these groups have listed the same cases or all of the cases listed in this research and many of these organizations or media have shown very little interest in cooperating with one another to compose such a work like this research does. There have been many articles written exhaustively on the subject using cases only as examples in proving a thesis but without an exhaustive sequential summary of the case. No single source has listed all of the 13 cases below as I dare to say that this research seems to be the first to pull together a comprehensive thoroughly vetted list of recent cases where innocent defendants have been executed.

Tortura, terrorismo e tutela dei migranti: le sfide globali di Amnesty International Intervista a Riccardo Noury

In this interview, Riccardo Noury, spokesman for Amnesty International Italia, highlights the activities his organisation has carried out to safeguard the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; amongst these, the right to psychic health stands out. The affective traumatisms and tortures these people have undergone in their countries have strained this right to the limit. Noury also raises the issue of psychiatrists who work for Countries that turn into torturers – such as the USA in Guantanamo – or segregationists – such as Russia, China and North Korea.

‘Yes to Football, No to Torture!’ The politics of the 1978 Football World Cup in West Germany

In the run-up to the 1978 World Cup, the West German section of Amnesty International launched a campaign called ‘Yes to Football, No to Torture!’ which sought to raise awareness of human rights violations in Argentina by taking advantage of the popularity of the XI World Cup. This article demonstrates that the Football Federation (Deutsches Fussball Bund) and its president Hermann Neuberger, in connivance with the West German Government, actively opposed one of the first large-scale human rights campaigns in 1970s West Germany, but were unable to prevent its success. ‘Yes to Football, No to Torture!’ sparked a significant discussion on the relationship of sports and politics, and rallied tens of thousands of people for the cause of human rights violations in Argentina.

The Breakdown of the Rule of Law in Sri Lanka: An Overview

This brief report, prepared for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice and dated September 22, 2010, analyzes the state and the underlying causes of the current breakdown of the rule of law in Sri Lanka. The information herein is drawn primarily, while not exclusively, from three sources: Basil Fernando, Sri Lanka: Impunity, Criminal Justice & Human Rights (Asian Human Rights Commission: Hong Kong, 2010); Justice in retreat: A report on the independence of the legal profession and the rule of law in Sri Lanka (International Bar Association Human Rights Institute [IBAHRI]: London May 2009); Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, The Rule of Law in Decline in Sri Lanka- Study on the Prevalence, Determinants and Causes of Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment (Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims: Copenhagen, 2009). The Pinto-Jayawardena report provides a detailed analysis of the causes behind the breakdown of the rule of law in Sri Lanka, while Fernando’s work provides a conceptual and critical analysis of overarching themes that is extremely useful for understanding the situation in Sri Lanka. Facts and figures are also drawn from a wealth of other reports and analyses published by a range of actors, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, Reporters Without Borders, the International Crisis Group, United Nations Human Rights Council Special Rapporteurs, the European Union, and the Office of War Crimes Issues of the United States Department of State.

NGO-IGO Relations: Amnesty International, Council of Europe, and Abolition of the Death Penalty

This article draws on the previously unseen archival record to examine Amnesty International's contribution to the abolition of the death penalty in the Council of Europe legal space. The Parliamentary Assembly and the European Court of Human Rights' contributions are widely discussed in scholarly and policy circles alike, but Amnesty International's substantive contribution in the 1970s and in 1989 is less well documented. Political and legal actors in Strasbourg have significant control over the content and timing of international agreements, but in this case Amnesty International was decisive in shifting substantive considerations as to need for regional intervention to prohibit European states from exposing individuals to the death penalty. Of interest to policy students and international relations scholars alike, documenting Amnesty International activity also provides an illustration of nongovernmental actors' contribution to Strasbourg human rights policymaking over time and across a range of polit...

Amnesty International Launches Campaign to Protect Women's Rights

In preparation for the Fourth U.N. World Conference on Women, The U.S. branchof Amnesty International has launched a campaign to draw attention to increasingabuses of women's basic human rights around the world.

International non-governmental organizations and the abolition of the death penalty

During the past 45 years, nearly 100 national states have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. This global diffusion poses a puzzle since capital punishment has long been accepted as the ultimate criminal sanction and its abolition has often been politically unpopular in many parts of the world. Although the literature has provided several possible explanations, the role of human rights international non-governmental organizations in worldwide death penalty abolition has not yet received sustained analytic attention. This article offers the first such analysis by arguing that human rights international non-governmental organizations empower pro-abolition constituencies and influence governments toward abolition by framing capital punishment as a human rights violation and lobbying parliamentarians to repeal death penalty laws. Event history analyses of 158 national states from 1967 to 2010 offer strong support for the theory. Controlling for regime type, regional demonstration effects, the Council of Europe, and other rival factors, this article finds that human rights international non-governmental organizations’ local engagement has strongly significant positive relationships with complete abolition. This finding is highly robust against control variable bias, endogeneity bias, omitted variable bias, model dependence, and the alternative operationalization of control variables and the dependent variable. Furthermore, the Philippines example demonstrates the theory’s plausibility. It provides process-tracing evidence that through human rights framing and legislative lobbying, the national sections and member organizations of such human rights international non-governmental organizations as Amnesty International, the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care, the International Federation of Human Rights, and Caritas Internationalis led Philippine legislators toward complete abolition in 2006.

Voice of Bhopal: Different Dimensions of the Barriers to Justice in Bhopal Gas Tragedy Case

The human rights impact of transnational organizations on local population in developing or under developed countries are not concealed. Egregious violations in recent times include the following, to cite but a few: ITT’s involvement in subverting Allende’s democratic government in Chile in 1973; the complicity of mining MNCs in plundering resources, prolonging the war and condoning human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the role of Western companies in human rights abuses associated with the Yadana pipeline project in Burma. Civil Society Organizations such as Amnesty International have also stated that some corporations exploit weak and poorly enforced domestic regulation with devastating effect on people and communities. Even after the implementation of United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights , several barriers to provide access to effective remedy for adverse corporate impacts have been recognized by experts such as Jennifer Zerk. One of such cases is that of Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Surya Deva in his book correctly states that Bhopal has been treated as a mass tort or an environmental tragedy and not as a human rights issue. Justice remains elusive for thousands of victims of the disaster, delayed litigation aggravates the sorrows of the victims and lack of political will to prosecute the perpetrating company makes Bhopal an ideal case to understand the various barriers to effective remedy. The aim of this essay would be to understand the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Case as a focal point and realize the barriers to accessing remedy faced by the victims of the poisonous gas leak. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part of the essay is to understand the factual matrix surrounding the leakage and also to have an overview of the litigation which ensued in the courts of law, both in United States and India. The second part of the essay would discuss how the various legal/ procedural, financial/structural and conceptual barriers restrict access to effective remedy for the victims of the gas leak. The last part of the essay would provide some key recommendations for reducing the barriers to access to effective remedy in Bhopal case.

Data Visualization for Human Rights Advocacy

In a world of ‘Big Data’, data visualization allows the viewer to explore curated data; the creator to quickly convey complex information; and advocates to vividly display their view of a better world. Fields as disparate as journalism, environmental advocacy, and development assistance are taking advantage of these data-filled times. A similar movement can be described for the realm of human rights advocacy—although at a much smaller scale. Human rights advocates have been increasingly using data to better understand rights violations and to communicate their findings and messages to targeted audiences, from the general public to policymakers and judicial bodies. While the use of data and visualization among human rights advocates is becoming more common, innovations are being taken up unevenly, and advocates admit that choices about approaches and techniques are largely based on anecdotal evidence. This article introduces the results of preliminary research into some of these questions that are the product of collaboration between researchers from a school of engineering and a school of law. It provides an initial assessment of the field, presenting the results of a study examining the use of data visualization and other visual features by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch through content coding and expert interviews. It then offers the findings of two crowdsourced user studies into pressing questions in the visualization field which hold promise for human rights advocates seeking to communicate their messages through data visualization, and concludes by suggesting further areas for research.

Uncertain Standing: Normative Applications of Standing Doctrine Produce Unpredictable Jurisdictional Bars to Common Law Data Breach Claims

In the absence of federal mandates, data breach litigation should help to establish data security standards to guide corporations and reassure consumers. Regrettably, too many consumers who bring these claims are denied standing under the injury-in-fact requirement before those claims can proceed to the merits. Relatedly, the Supreme Court affirmed the “certainly impending” standard for satisfying the injury-in-fact element of standing on the basis of an increased risk of future harm in a 2013 data collection case, Clapper v. Amnesty International. Since Clapper, much of the disagreement among federal courts in data breach litigation has concerned the requisite imminence of identity theft that a consumer’s allegations must demonstrate in order for the consumer to establish injury. However, Clapper should be inapposite in these cases because the Court has only applied the exacting injury inquiry that it applied in Clapper to other causes of action that present separation of powers concerns. More broadly, the application of the injury-in-fact requirement in data breach litigation forces courts to make at least two normative choices that lead to doctrinal unpredictability. In applying the factual injury test, courts enjoy discretion to identify the factual harm at issue and determine the minimum degree of risk necessary to render that harm “imminent.” Imposing either of these choices allows courts to dismiss claims on jurisdictional grounds that may well be compensable under substantive law. Moreover, this result is irreconcilable with the Court’s modern theoretical justification for the injury-in-fact requirement as a restraint on the unconstitutional expansion of judicial power. Courts could reduce doctrinal confusion in data breach litigation and thus encourage more predictable outcomes by remedying either of these two normative choices: selecting the factual injury or determining the minimum probability of that injury’s occurrence necessary to render that harm imminent.

‘Clases de español’: Education and testimonio in the Poetry of Alicia Partnoy

AbstractAlicia Partnoy is a survivor of kidnapping, unlawful detention and torture during the 1976–1983 dictatorship in Argentina. She has testified about her experiences at the United Nations, Amnesty International and CONADEP (the Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons), and continues to campaign against human rights violations. In a close reading of ‘Clases de español’ from the collection Volando bajito (2005), I will analyse Partnoy’s creation of the poet–teacher and how this figure is used to comment on the transmission and educational function of testimonio. The classroom forms an atypical testimonial space, used to reflect on the situation of the exile as well as the responsibilities of those who listen to testimony. This article will examine the possibilities that poetry offers for the expression of testimonio and how Partnoy uses the poetic form to challenge the limitations of linguistic communication.ResumenAlicia Partnoy es sobreviviente de secuestro, detención ilegal y tortura en la dictadura argentina entre 1976 y 1983. Testificó en las Naciones Unidas, Amnistía Internacional y la Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONADEP) y sigue trabajando en contra de los abusos de derechos humanos. En una lectura de ‘Clases de español’ del poemario Volando bajito (2005), analizaré la creación de la poeta–docente y cómo ésta se usa para tratar de la transmisión y la función educativo del testimonio. El aula es un atípico espacio testimonial y se usa para reflexionar sobre el estado del exiliado y las obligaciones de los que escuchan el testimonio. Este articulo examina las posibilidades poéticas en cuanto a la expresión del testimonio y cómo Partnoy utiliza la poesía para desafiar las limitaciones de la comunicación lingüística.

Leishmaniasis, conflict, and political terror: A spatio-temporal analysis

BackgroundLeishmaniasis has been estimated to cause the ninth largest burden amongst global infectious diseases. Occurrence of the disease has been anecdotally associated with periods of conflict, leading to its referral as a disease of ‘guerrilla warfare.’ Despite this, there have been few studies that quantitatively investigate the extent to which leishmaniasis coincides with conflict or political terror. MethodologyThis study employed a longitudinal approach to empirically test for an association between cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis incidence with occurrence of conflict and political terror at the national level, annually for 15 years (1995–2010). Leishmaniasis incidence data were collected for 54 countries, and combined with UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict and Amnesty International political terror datasets. Mixed effects negative binomial regression models clustered at the country-level were constructed to evaluate the incidence rate ratios against the predictors, while controlling for wealth. Additionally, to understand how and why conflict-terror may be associated with leishmaniasis incidence, we conducted a historical analysis. We identify and discuss posited causal mechanisms in the literature, and critically assessed pathways by which leishmaniasis might occur in places and times of conflict-terror. ResultsThere was a significant dose-response relationship for disease incidence based on increasing levels of conflict and terror. Country-years experiencing very high levels of conflict-terror were associated with a 2.38 times higher [95% CI: 1.40–4.05] and 6.02 times higher [95% CI: 2.39–15.15] incidence of cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis, respectively. Historical analysis indicated that conflict and terror contribute to—or coincide with—leishmaniasis incidence through processes of population displacement and health system deterioration. ConclusionsThis research highlights the potentially increased risks for cutaneous and visceral leishmaniasis incidence in areas of high conflict-terror. Notably, conflict-terror may act as an empirical proxy for indirect and concomitant processes of social breakdown, migration, and instability, which emerge as the dominant processes associated with disease incidence.

Letter-writing and Transnational Activism on Behalf of Indonesian Political Prisoners: Gatot Lestario and his Legacy

ABSTRACTAmnesty International estimated in 1977 that between 600,000 and 750,000 Indonesians had been or were still imprisoned as a result of the Army-led anti-communist violence in Indonesia in the mid-1960s. This article charts the relationship between members of Amnesty International and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) with a political prisoner on death row in East Java, Gatot Lestario, a former leader of the Indonesian Communist Party. This article draws on the letters he wrote over a period of three years before his execution in 1985 and interviews with his pen pals. It traces the ways in which he encouraged his pen pals to advocate for human rights in Indonesia and their responses, as well as his own involvement in political prisoner advocacy. This case study illustrates the disappearance of Indonesia's previously close and solidary relationship with the socialist world and its replacement at the people-to-people level with human rights activism involving Western activists. This is particularly evident in the increasingly important role played by members of Amnesty International, the Quakers and other overseas organizations concerned with Indonesia. Finally, the article assesses Gatot Lestario's impact, after his execution, on the development of a long-term advocacy network for Indonesia's political prisoners.

Misogyny and Misery on the Menu

Misogyny and Misery on the Menu

Torture and the Material-Semiotic Networks of Violence Across Borders

The intimately local violence of torture is, simultaneously and increasingly, a global phenomenon. This paper explores a transnational convergence in the local morphologies of torture practices across time, space, and state-type through an inquiry into its global ontologies. Drawing on the insights of Actor-Network Theory, the papers introduces a material-semiotic mode of inquiry into violence in order to locate the (re)emergence and (re)convergence of torture practices within a hitherto unnoticed space of violence constituted by the circulation of violence- enabling knowledges, visual and textual inscriptions, human persons, and non-human material objects. This analysis is based on evidence gathered from interviews conducted with Syrian victims and perpetrators of torture, alongside primary and secondary sources detailing torture in other localities, which stresses the importance of tracing local instances of torture through to these material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. Concluding with a theory of the spatio-temporal oscillation of violent practices, which highlights the analytical limits of both the constructivist literature on norms and the decisionism of literatures on political exceptionalism, the paper argues that its mode of inquiry provides novel and important insights for comprehending the stubbornness of the “global crisis” in torture that Amnesty International has described for over forty years.

Los desafìos de la sentencia de la Corte Interamericana en el caso Almonacid Arellano

Abstract. The article analyzes the judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the case “Almonacid Arellano”, where it was decided that (a) although the Chilean declaration acknowledging the competence of the Inter-American Court by “operation of law” referred to facts subsequent to the date the ratification instrument was submitted, the unilateral act of any state is conditioned by the Convention itself as a whole and cannot be subject to objections; and (b) Chile infringed the general duties pursuant to articles 1.1 and 2 of the American Convention on Human Rights (the duty to respect the rights and the duty to adopt decisions of domestic law). Upon the analysis of both aspects mentioned, the legitimacy of Decree Law 2191 is studied in respect of its maintenance as well as its adoption, laying special emphasis on all relevant aspects of the matter. The article ends with a reflection on the legal nature of human rights’ international regulations in Chile and the annulment of the Amnesty Decree Law, concluding that any court which deems that the law does not adjust to the constitutional block of human rights, may and must request the Constitutional Court to pronounce on the inapplicability of the legal precept.