Amnesty International

Amnesty International (AI) is an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) committed to protecting human rights worldwide. It is widely recognized for its accomplishments, such as winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. Among human rights NGOs, it is notably a membership organization, claiming 2.2 million members in 2010. This distinguishes it from its competitors and is an important factor in determining the organizational structure of the NGO, how it operates, and the types of human rights it advocates. Throughout most of its history, its primary focus has been on civil and political rights, but since 2001, it has integrated social, economic, and cultural rights into its agenda. AI's International Secretariat (IS) is located in London, United Kingdom, and it has national sections in 80 countries. Some of its most important campaigns have been against torture, the death penalty, and nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation.

On Sunday, May 28, 1961, an opinion piece titled “The Forgotten Prisoners” appeared in the London Observer. Written by barrister Peter Benenson, it detailed the stories of individuals who were jailed for their “conscience”: nonviolent political and religious dissent from their respective governments. The response to Benenson's article was larger than expected; it not only created support for a yearlong campaign to help so-called prisoners of conscience (POCs), but it opened the way for an international movement and a new human rights concept. POCs served as a rallying point for mobilizing volunteers to form groups in order to “adopt” these victims of human rights abuse. Prisoner adoption meant persistently penning letters on their behalf to local and higher level officials until a definitive outcome, whether positive or negative, was achieved.

AI, from the beginning, espoused a number of principles. First, the organization was to take no funding from governments but instead rely on private, and preferably individual, donations from members. This helped reinforce the notion of political impartiality. Second, membership was truly meaningful in the sense that, organized as groups under national sections, individual members not only contributed to the coffers of AI but also actively contributed to the advocacy work of freeing POCs. Policymaking also comes from the membership at International Council meetings, currently biennial. Third, the need to generate support from the membership in support of its advocacy agenda meant that, for 40 years, AI's scope of human rights advocacy was extremely limited under its mandate. This self-imposed mandate [Page 65]constricted the IS from expanding the scope of the NGO's activities. This was both the strength of the organization, focusing international attention to a subset of civil and political rights, and a source of criticism. Eventually the NGO moved to support a broader range of rights in its advocacy.

Many have tried to explain why AI has been successful. Its involvement in high-level international discussions about torture and extrajudicial executions resulted in UN-led initiatives such as the Convention Against Torture. The accuracy of its reporting has always helped AI in gaining legitimacy vis-à-vis states. This attribute of AI's research has been recognized by scholars and policymakers alike. The desire to maintain high-quality reporting pushed AI to centralize research tasks at its administrative core, the IS. Although others contributed to the information on the treatment of individuals, it was the IS that compiled the research and disseminated casework among the adoption groups, in addition to producing publicly distributed reports on human rights violations. In recent years, research functions have been delegated to some of the larger national sections, such as AIUSA, after a period of negotiation between the IS and more powerful national sections in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, it is often noted that AI's unique organizational structure contributed to its success. By centralizing research functions but distributing such information widely to a broad network of activists, AI is able to extend its influence over human rights in a way that has, to date, been unprecedented.

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