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Women's Rights Campaigns
Amnesty International mobilizes AI activists, the public and US policymakers to promote and defend the human rights of women and girls around the world. In the United States, a major goal of the organization is to persuade the US government to ratify the UN Women’s Convention, the most basic and important human rights treaty protecting women against discrimination and the forms of violence it engenders.
On March 8th, International Women's Day, Amnesty International asks that all of its members let their representatives know the importance of CEDAW. For great talking points and to find coalition partners to work with visit: http://www.womenstreaty.org
Special Focus Case
CHINA
Rebiya Kadeer, Prisoner of Conscience
UPDATE: Amnesty International learned that Rebiya Kadeer may have been beaten in prison.
Rebiya Kadeer, a women's rights activist and successful businesswoman, was arrested in August 1999 while on her way to meet with U.S. Congressional representatives. She was sentenced in March 2000 to eight years in prison for "providing secret information to foreigners." According to the official Chinese press, this "secret information" consisted only of publicly available newspapers and journals that Ms. Kadeer had sent abroad to her husband.
Amnesty International considers Rebiya Kadeer to be a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for exercising her fundamental right to freedom of expression.
TURKEY
Leyla Zana, Prisoner of Conscience
An advocate for the rights of Turkey's Kurdish minority, her arrest stemmed from her swearing-in ceremony as a new member of Parliament during which she made a statement in the Kurdish language and wore traditional Kurdish colors.
GBLT Rights Campaign
Around the world, the human rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people are violated daily. Not only are people beaten, imprisoned and killed by their own governments for engaging in homosexual acts, but those suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) are routinely the victims of harassment, discrimination and violence. Many of those who speak up for lesbian and gay rights - regardless of their sexual identity - are themselves persecuted with impunity.
Amnesty UTK works to protect the rights of LGBT peoples through Amnesty USA's OUTfront Campaign. Working together as an energized and informed association of activists and members, OUTfront will come to the defense of LGBT people everywhere - people like Mariana Cetiner, a 40-year-old woman who was imprisoned in Romania for "attempting to seduce another woman." OUTfront gives people like Mariana a powerful, international voice - one that is working in coalition with other human rights groups and the LGBT community to end the abuse of LGBT people everywhere.
Africa's Continental War
The link above opens up to a slide show that explains the beginnings of the Hutu/Tutsi conflict that has exploded into a continental war for Africa.
Conflict Diamonds
In many African countries, including Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) diamonds have been, and continue to be linked to terrible human rights abuses either by insurgent groups to fuel conflict and carry out atrocities against innocent civilians or by unscrupulous government who are equally brutal. In addition concerns have mounted over links between conflict diamonds and money laundering by groups like Al-Queda since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Anti-Death Penalty Campaign
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception. The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state in the name of justice. It violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
There can never be any justification for torture or for cruel treatment. Like torture, an execution constitutes an extreme physical and mental assault on an individual. Consider the disgust most people feel when they hear accounts of individuals receiving 100 volts of electricity to sensitive parts of the body as a method of torture. Surely we should feel even more disgusted by the use of 2000 volts applied to a person's body with the intent to deliberately kill? The physical pain caused by the action of killing a human being cannot be quantified, nor can the psychological suffering caused by foreknowledge of death at the hands of the state.
The death penalty is discriminatory and is often used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. It is imposed and carried out arbitrarily.
The death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act of violence by the state and will inevitably claim innocent victims. Since human justice is fallible, the risk of executing the innocent will never be eliminated. Amnesty International continues to demand unconditionally the worldwide abolition of the death penalty.
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