AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

(logo: burning candle wrapped in a barbed wire)

Amnesty is an independent, international organisation that seeks to inform public opinion about violations of human rights, especially the abridgements of freedom of speech and of religion. Moreover it seeks the release of "prisoners of conscience" who are not guilty of any violence and it demands fair trials for them. It opposes all kinds of inhuman treatment like the death penalty and torture and it tries to find out about people who have "disappeared".

The movement was founded in London in 1961 by Peter Benenson who called on people of every stratum of society to work for the release of thousands of persons who have been imprisoned because of their beliefs. If Amnesty International finds out about a "prisoner of conscience" he or she is adopted by one of the organisation's groups and the government is flooded with protesting letters, signatures are collected and money is raised to send relief until the prisoner is released. So everyone is needed in the struggle for human rights all over the world.

ACTIVISTS FOR RIGHTS

Fifty years ago this past week, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. The world of 1948, impressed by the Nuremberg Tribunals, seemed ready to enforce international laws to prevent new acts of genocide and crimes against humanity. But nothing happened - until 1993, when the international tribunal for Bosnia became the first of several new attempts to enforce these laws. One important reason for the change has been the participation of citizen-activists, who have initiated some of the cases and played a major role in shaping the new courts.

The case against Augusto Pinochet of Chile began with private citizens; an organization of Spanish lawyers filed a complaint accusing him of human right abuses. The laws of Spain and many other nations allow judges to investigate complaints from the public and open a case if the evidence warrants. The 1994 French conviction of Paul Touvier for crimes against humanity in Nazi-occupied France began as a complaint by the son of a victim, and the work of Nazi-hunters such as Beate Klarsfeld was instrumental in the 1987 conviction of Klaus Barbie. The only cases in U.S. courts against foreign human rights violators are suits brought by private citizens against figures such as the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Activists outside government have also influenced the new international courts. The International Criminal Court would not have been endorsed last summer by 120 nations without the work of human rights groups, which mobilized citizens, lobbied leaders and wrote and analysed drafts of the court's statutes. Governments have been more receptive to their arguments since the end of the Cold War, which has provided many of the world's worst criminals with political patrons. Leaders were also more willing to act because they failed to prevent genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda.

The new court can aggressively prosecute rape and sexual enslavement, as the Bosnia and Rwanda tribunals have. This is largely due to international women's groups, which lobbied the governments writing the courts' statutes and raised prosecutors' awareness of the issue. Outside pressure was unable to persuade Washington to join the court. Private citizens cannot push leaders where they refuse to go, but they have breathed life into the documents that their governments signed 50 years ago.

UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14: Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.