Human rights and Amnesty international functioning as a NGO

1. Human rights & Amnesty
International

3. What are Human Rights
• Economic, social and cultural rights
• the right to work in just and favorable
conditions;
• the right to social protection, to an adequate
standard of living and to the highest
attainable standards of physical and mental
well-being;
• the right to education and the enjoyment of
benefits of cultural freedom and scientific
progress.

4. What are Human Rights
• Civil and political rights
• deals with such rights as
• freedom of movement;
• equality before the law;
• the right to a fair trial and presumption of innocence;
• freedom of thought,
• conscience and religion;
• freedom of opinion and expression;
• peaceful assembly;
• freedom of association;

5. What are Human Rights
• participation in public affairs and elections;
• and protection of minority rights.
• It prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life;
• torture, cruel or degrading treatment or
punishment;
• slavery and forced labor;
• arbitrary arrest or detention;
• arbitrary interference with privacy;
• war propaganda; discrimination;
• and advocacy of racial or religious hatred.
Civil and political rights

6. History of Amnesty
Amnesty is a world wide organization that works for the
protection of human rights. It is independent from all
governments and is neutral in relation to political
groups and ideologies and is also not aligned with any
religion.
Amnesty International began with one man’s outrage and
his courage to do something about it. After learning of two
Portuguese students imprisoned for raising a toast to
freedom in 1961, British lawyer Peter Benenson
published an article, “The Forgotten Prisoners” in
the Observer newspaper.

7. We are concerned with abuses of
human rights internationally.
Amnesty has many
:-achievements
•Prisoners of conscience released
•Death sentences commuted
•Torturers brought to justice
•Government persuaded to change
inhumane laws and practices.

8. Illegal Imprisonment and Torture
Bisher al-Rawi

9. Guantanamo Bay detention
camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention
camp is a United States military
prison located within Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base, also referred to
as Guantánamo or GTMO , which
is on the coast of Guantánamo
Bay in Cuba. Since the inmates
have been detained indefinitely
without trial and several detainees
have alleged torture, the
operations of this camp are
considered to be a major breach
of human rights by Amnesty
International.

10. On April 1, UK resident Bisher al-Rawi was reunited with his
family in the UK after more than four years in military custody
at the Guantanamo detention camp. Bisher al-Rawi - along
with friend Jamil el-Banna - had been detained since November
2002 when the pair were arrested in Gambia on suspicion of
alleged links with al-Qu’ida.
Bisher al-Rawi expressed his thanks to AI stating:-
“Amnesty International and its good work throughout the world
is a blooming flower of hope. I sincerely believe that without
Amnesty’s immediate intervention in our case during those
extremely difficult first days after our arrest in the Gambia, we
probably would have been goners”
Guantanamo: Freedom for UK
resident Bisher al-Rawi

11. then a tiny concrete cell without sunlight for months
at a time, subjected to solitary confinement and
ongoing physical and psychological torture such as
sleep and sensory deprivation and stripped of all his
legal rights.
At the end of last year, the Howard government of Australia
was forced to act after public outrage at the treatment of
Hicks and the government’s involvement in the abuse. A
Military Commission was convened under new laws
similar to those struck down by the US Supreme Court in
June 2006.
In Guantanamo, Hicks was first kept
in a cage,

12. We all have rights
because we are human

13. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Email us at:
sct@amnesty.org.uk
A colorful pocket-sized booklet of all the articles of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Ideal for introductory lessons on
human rights and great for students to keep

14. I Welcome Refugees

15. Poverty and Human Rights

16. LGBTI rights:
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
intersex

17. Syria

18. End the Death Penalty

19. Illegal Data Mining/Facebook/Cambridge Analytica

21. North Korea- Nuclear war fare

22. Control Arms

23. Women's human rights
Every day, women on Twitter face a barrage of violence and
abuse: from racist and sexist attacks to rape and death threats,
they've seen it all.
Twitter claims to be a champion of free expression, but women are
routinely leaving the platform as the unchecked violence and abuse
they receive becomes too much to bear.

24. Campaigning for Human Rights

25. But human rights are still abused today
HYPERLINK to Nolwandle’s Story – 3 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7n1Ks3exko

26. Saudi Arabia
• Saudi Arabia has one of the
worst human rights records in
the world.
• Torture, public execution,
discrimination, intolerance for
free speech, possible war crimes
in Yemen – and the list could go
on. Dozens of activists remain
behind bars in the Gulf Kingdom,
simply for exercising their right to
freedom of expression and
assembly.

27. How can you get
involved?
www.amnesty.org.uk/youth
www.amnesty.org.uk/student
TOGETHER WE ARE
POWERFUL
http://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=522KkWPcwDA

28. Conclusion
• Clearly we cannot give up our freedom.
• Without our freedom we are nothing.
• We don’t want terrorism to occur but cannot
take away our very fiber of society in
combating the things we fear.
• We create a world filled with fear rather than
a world of freedom and liberty, of equality
and safety.
• Amnesty believes in justice and humanity for
all and advocates for this all over the world.