Amnesty International

• 1. The Forgotten Prisoners

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  On the 19th of November 1960, a lawyer named Peter Benenson rode the London Underground and read a newspaper report about two Portuguese students. They had been sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly drinking a toast to liberty under Portugal's authoritarian Estado Novo government. Benenson felt a sickening sense of impotence reading that story. He later wrote that if those feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done. This moment sparked an idea that would change human rights history forever.

  Benenson worked with his friend Eric Baker to draft an article titled The Forgotten Prisoners. On the 28th of May 1961, David Astor published it on the front page of The Observer newspaper. The piece described people imprisoned or executed because their opinions were unacceptable to their governments. It marked the launch of Appeal for Amnesty, 1961, which aimed to mobilize public opinion quickly and widely. By July 1961, leadership decided this appeal would form the basis of a permanent organization called Amnesty International.

• 2. Secrets And Suspicion

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  In 1963, documents revealed that the British Foreign Office instructed its operatives abroad to provide discreet support for Amnesty campaigns. Benenson wrote to Lord Lansdowne proposing to prop up a refugee counsellor on the border between Bechuanaland Protectorate and apartheid South Africa. He stated he wanted to assist people fleeing across the border but not those actively engaged in struggle against apartheid. Communist influence should not be allowed to spread in that part of Africa, he wrote.

  Later that year, Hans Goran Franck, chairman of Amnesty's Swedish section, wrote a report on allegations of torture at an interrogation centre run by the colonial government in Aden. Amnesty refused to publish the report. According to Benenson, general-secretary Robert Swann had suppressed it in deference to the Foreign Office. A memo by Lord Chancellor Gerald Gardiner states that Amnesty held the complaint as long as they could simply because Peter Benenson did not want to do anything to hurt a Labour government. Documents later implicated Benenson in connections to the British government, starting what became known as the Harry letters affair. Benenson resigned claiming British and American intelligence agents had infiltrated Amnesty and subverted its values.

• 3. The Nobel And The Balls

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  In 1976, Amnesty's British Section started a series of fund-raising events called The Secret Policeman's Balls. They were staged in London initially as comedy galas featuring members of comedy troupe Monty Python. John Cleese and Martin Lewis created and developed the first two shows in 1976 and 1977. Later shows included performances by leading rock musicians.

  Amnesty International was awarded the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for its defence of human dignity against torture. In 1984, the organization received the Four Freedoms Award. During the mid-to-late-1980s, Amnesty organized two major musical events. The 1986 Conspiracy of Hope tour played five concerts in the US and culminated in a daylong show at Giants Stadium featuring some thirty-odd acts. The 1988 Human Rights Now! world tour played concerts on five continents over six weeks timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• 4. Toxic Culture Revealed

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  In February 2019, Amnesty International's management team offered to resign after an independent report found what it called a toxic culture of workplace bullying. Evidence of bullying, harassment, sexism and racism was uncovered after investigating suicides of 30-year-old Gaëtan Mootoo in Paris in May 2018 and 28-year-old intern Rosalind McGregor in Geneva in July 2018. A 2019 externally commissioned report stated that bullying, public humiliation and other abuses of power are commonplace and routine practice by management.

  By October 2019, five of the seven members of the senior leadership team at Amnesty's international secretariat left the organization with generous redundancy packages. This included Anna Neistat, who was a senior manager directly implicated in the independent report on the suicide of Amnesty's West Africa researcher Gaëtan Mootoo. In June 2022, a 106-page independent investigation by Global HPO Ltd concluded that Amnesty International UK exhibits institutional and systemic racism. The report found AIUK has failed to embed principles of anti-racism into its own DNA and faces bullying issues within the organisation.

• 5. Budget And Exit Packages

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  In May 2019, Secretary General Kumi Naidoo admitted to a hole in the organization's budget of up to £17m in donor money to the end of 2020. To deal with this crisis, Naidoo announced headquarters would cut almost 100 jobs as part of urgent restructuring. Unite the Union said redundancies were a direct result of overspending by the organization's senior leadership team despite an increase in income.

  In September 2020, The Times reported that Amnesty paid £800,000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaëtan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret. The pre-trial agreement required she sign a non-disclosure agreement preventing discussion with press or social media. In February 2011, newspaper stories revealed Irene Khan received payment of £533,103 following her resignation on the 31st of December 2009. That sum was more than four times her annual salary of £132,490. Philip Davies criticized these payments telling Daily Express people making donations never dreamed they were subsidising fat cat payouts.

• 6. Controversies And Conflicts

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  In 1990, when the United States government decided whether to invade Iraq, a Kuwaiti woman identified only as Nayirah testified to Congress about Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators with children inside them. Amnesty International confirmed the story and helped spread it among Western public. Her testimony aired on ABC Nightline reaching an estimated audience between 35 and 53 million Americans. After the war, it was found the testimony was entirely fabricated and Nayirah was daughter of a Kuwaiti delegate.

  On the 4th of August 2022, during Russian invasion of Ukraine, Amnesty published a report accusing Armed Forces of Ukraine of endangering civilians through combat tactics. Oksana Pokalchuk, leader of Amnesty Ukraine, said the report was compiled by foreign observers without any assistance from local staff. She resigned from her post following publication. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Amnesty of trying to amnesty the terrorist state and shift responsibility from aggressor to victim. The report sparked outrage in Ukraine and West but was praised by several Russian figures including Russian embassy in London.