By Adotei Akwei, Amnesty International USA
By the AIUSA Cogroup Writers
August 30 is the International Day of the Disappeared. Enforced disappearances are a horrific crime where a government or its agents detain someone and then deny all knowledge of their whereabouts or fate. Once largely used by military dictatorships, they now occur in every region…
By Kaitlyn O’Shaughnessy, AIUSA Women’s Rights Coordination Group
On Wednesday, June 16, 2021, U.S. Attorney General Garland overruled two prior precedent decisions which will ease the asylum process for women, survivors of domestic violence, and families, restoring a part of U.S. asylum law to its pre-Trump state.
By the AIUSA Cogroup Writers
June 26 is observed each year as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Amnesty International is campaigning to abolish torture wherever it occurs. Torture is barbaric and inhumane. It can never be justified. In this blog post, we’ll describe some of the…
By Diane Bernabei, Jasmeet Sidhu, Nate Smith, and Susan Waltz, Amnesty International USA
In its first hundred days, the Biden Administration has missed a number of opportunities to make meaningful reforms in arms trade policy to help protect human rights around the world, as well as in the United States…
By Zoya Waliany, AIUSA Saudi Arabia Country Specialist
After 1,001 days away from her family and her friends, Saudi Arabian women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul has finally been released from detention. In the first three months of her detention, Loujain faced sexual abuse and other torture. …
By Jim McDonald, Sri Lanka Country Specialist, Amnesty International USA
Today, the human rights situation in Sri Lanka is grim. The government is silencing and intimidating dissenting voices. The space for civil society, independent of government control, is shrinking alarmingly. …
By Adotei Akwei, Deputy Director, Amnesty International USA
On the first day of his tenure, President Biden signed an executive order rescinding the Muslim and African bans which had excluded citizens from 13 mostly Muslim-majority and African countries from traveling to the United States. The Trump travel bans were among…
By Diane Bernabei (AIUSA Military, Security and Police Transfers Coordination Group)
On Wednesday, December 22, 2020, plain-clothed Ugandan security forces abducted Nicholas Opiyo while he was eating lunch at a restaurant in Kamwokya near Kampala in Uganda. They held him incommunicado for more than 24 hours. …
By Joshua Cooper, Hawaii Legislative Coordinator, Amnesty International USA
The United States underwent its third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) one week after the recent election.
For two years, civil society organizations across the country drafted stakeholder submissions, met with UN Missions in Geneva and New York to share specific recommendations…
