| Founded | 1966 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit NGO |
| Headquarters | New York NY, United States |
| Services | Protecting human rights |
| Fields | Lobbying, research, consultancy. |
Key people | Suzanne Nossel Frank Jannuzi Larry Cox Rick Halperin |
| Website | www |
Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) is an American non-profit non-governmental organization that is part of the worldwide Amnesty International organization.
Amnesty International is an organization of more than 7 million supporters, activists and volunteers in over 150 countries, [1] with complete independence from government, corporate or national interests. Amnesty International works to protect human rights worldwide. Its vision is one of a world in which every person - regardless of race, religion, gender, or ethnicity - enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.
Since its foundation in 1966, [2] the United States section, made up of over 350,000 members, of the nonpartisan organization has worked to free prisoners of conscience, oppose torture, and fight other human rights violations around the world. It seeks to promote human rights in the United States through lobbying and education, and describes itself as working for full human rights for everyone.
Amnesty International USA's Security with Human Rights campaigns strongly against torture, unlawful detention, and prisoner abuse, particularly by United States military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization has opposed restrictions of human rights as part of the 'War on Terror', and does not believe that any torture or inhuman treatment is justified by the campaign against terrorism. The Security with Human Rights campaign also strongly advocates for the rights of victims of armed groups as well as accountability for those individuals and states that use torture, in order to end cycles of violence and increase overall global security against terrorism and human rights violations. [3]
Amnesty International USA publicly objected to the use of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp when it was opened in January 2002 because of its use to detain individuals without giving them due process or habeas corpus. As well as later in January 2009, when Susan J. Crawford, who was appointed by President Bush to be the Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions became the first Bush administration official to concede that at least one individual was tortured at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Affirming Amnesty International's position that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's explanation for Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp's existence was because of its optimal setting for interrogation and prosecution of extraordinarily dangerous persons for war crimes was in from Amnesty's view a thinly veiled excuse for allowing the use of torture. Amnesty International USA holds that all detainees should be either given a fair trial in federal court or be released.
In Amnesty International USA's campaign for Individuals at Risk (IAR), protections for anyone who is threatened of having their human rights violated because of who they are or what they believe is the mission. [4] To do this, IAR attempts to lobby both from the grassroots and State level by facilitating response, exposure and relevance especially in priority cases like the one of Shaker Aamer, a Guantanamo Bay detainee who has been cleared multiple times for release to the United Kingdom. As of February 2015, Aamer has been unlawfully detained for over 13 years and Amnesty International USA released Shaker Aamer's case of their website with the option to “take action” by sending a direct message to President Barack Obama calling for Shaker to be either charged and tried or immediately released to United Kingdom. [5]
The organization is currently active in campaigns to stop violence against women as part of an international campaign to see full human rights for everyone. My Body, My Rights! is a global campaign for the right to make decisions about a person's own "health, body, sexual life, and identity without fear of coercion or criminalization. Seek and receive information about sexuality and reproduction and access related health services and contraception. Decide whether and when to have children, and how many to have. Choose your intimate partner and whether and when to marry. Decide what type of family to create. Access family planning; contraception; safe and accessible post-abortion care; access to abortion in cases of rape, sexual assault, or incest, and pregnancy that poses a risk to the life or to physical or mental health; and, where legal, access to safe abortion services and "live free from discrimination, coercion and violence, including rape and other sexual violence, female genital mutilation, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, forced sterilization and forced marriage." Women are the largest oppressed demographic in the world and Amnesty International USA works to educate not only heterosexual women about their bodies and human rights but persons of every sexual orientation and gender identity. [6]
AIUSA strongly opposes the use of the death penalty in the United States, in accordance with the policy of the international organization; Amnesty calls for its worldwide abolition, particularly in the US, China, Iran, and Vietnam — four countries that make up the overwhelming majority of executions. AIUSA board member William F. Buckley resigned in January 1978 in protest over the organization's adoption of this stance on this issue. [7]
The Darfur conflict in Sudan is one of Amnesty International's top priorities, as a result of the large scale human rights abuses occurring there. Amnesty has called for the introduction of a United Nations peacekeeping force to prevent conflict and stop further unnecessary suffering.
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(February 2009) |
Executive Directors
Amnesty International is the USA's largest human rights group by membership, with over 350,000 members.[ citation needed ]
Extrajudicial punishment is a punishment for an alleged crime or offense which is carried out without legal process or supervision by a court or tribunal through a legal proceeding.
Reproductive rights are legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst countries around the world. The World Health Organization defines reproductive rights as follows:
Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence.
Torture, the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain upon an individual to extract information or a confession, or as an illicit extrajudicial punishment, is prohibited by international law and is illegal in most countries. However, it is still used by many governments. The subject of this article is the use of torture since the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which prohibited it.
Irene Zubaida Khan is a Bangladeshi lawyer appointed as of August 2020 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, the first woman appointed to this mandate. She previously served as the seventh Secretary General of Amnesty International. In 2011, she was elected Director-General of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Rome, an intergovernmental organization that works to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development. She was a consulting editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.
Ghost detainee is a term used in the executive branch of the United States government to designate a person held in a detention center, whose identity has been hidden by keeping them unregistered and therefore anonymous. Such uses arose as the Bush administration initiated the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. As documented in the 2004 Taguba Report, it was used in the same manner by United States officials and contractors of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003–2004.
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded in 1966 by Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler and others particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to achieve social justice.
The situation for human rights in Syria is considered one of the worst in the world and has been globally condemned by international organizations like the United Nations, Human rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the European Union. Civil liberties, political rights, freedom of speech and assembly are virtually non-existent under the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad; which is regarded as "one of the world's most repressive regimes". The 50th edition of Freedom in the World, the annual report published by Freedom House since 1973, designates Syria as "Worst of the Worst" among the "Not Free" countries. The report lists Syria as one of the two countries to get the lowest possible score (1/100).
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of April 2023, of the 779 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and nine had died while in custody.
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism or rebellion, to control illegal immigration, or to otherwise protect the ruling regime.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence". The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
There were widespread reports of systematic and escalating violations of human rights in Zimbabwe under the regime of Robert Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, between 1980 and 2017.
In United States law, habeas corpus is a recourse challenging the reasons or conditions of a person's detention under color of law. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. A persistent standard of indefinite detention without trial and incidents of torture led the operations of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be challenged internationally as an affront to international human rights, and challenged domestically as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, including the right of petition for habeas corpus. On 19 February 2002, Guantanamo detainees petitioned in federal court for a writ of habeas corpus to review the legality of their detention.
The government of Belarus is criticized for its human rights violations and persecution of non-governmental organisations, independent journalists, national minorities, and opposition politicians. In a testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeled Belarus as one of the world's six "outposts of tyranny". In response, the Belarusian government called the assessment "quite far from reality". During 2020 Belarusian presidential election and protests, the number of political prisoners recognized by Viasna Human Rights Centre rose dramatically to 1062 as of 16 February 2022. Several people died after the use of unlawful and abusive force by law enforcement officials during 2020 protests. According to Amnesty International, the authorities didn't investigate violations during protests but instead harassed those who challenged their version of events. In July 2021, the authorities launched a campaign against the remaining non-governmental organizations, liquidating at least 270 of them by October, including all previously registered human rights organizations in the country.
In the United States, human rights comprise a series of rights which are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States, state constitutions, treaty and customary international law, legislation enacted by Congress and state legislatures, and state referendums and citizen's initiatives. The Federal Government has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to its citizens and non-citizens. These rights have evolved over time through constitutional amendments, legislation, and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the portion of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Within the United States, federal courts have jurisdiction over international human rights laws.
The Temara interrogation center, also known as Temara secret detention center, is an extrajudicial detainment and secret prison facility of Morocco located within a forested area of Rabat, Morocco. It is operated by the Directorate for the Surveillance of the Territory, a Moroccan domestic intelligence agency implicated in past and ongoing human rights violations, which continues to arrest, detain and interrogate individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism-related activities outside of the Moroccan legal framework.
Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy biases. Various governments criticized by Amnesty International have in turn criticized the organization, complaining about what they assert constituted one-sided reporting.
Human rights in Nicaragua refer to personable, political and social rights granted to every human in Nicaragua. Nicaragua derives its understanding of human rights from the Constitution of Nicaragua and international law. Nicaragua is a member state of the United Nations which states that fundamental human rights, such as freedom from slavery and freedom of expression, are enabled for all human beings without discrimination.
Abortion in Honduras is completely prohibited under any circumstance, and has been constitutionally prohibited since 1982. The country's constitutional prohibition on abortion was further cemented by the country's Congress on January 22, 2021. In order to change this law, a three-quarters majority in the Congress will be required, or 96 out of 128 votes.
Human rights in Slovakia are governed by the laws of Slovakia and overseen by international organizations such as the Council of Europe.
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