At the end of April 2019, Urgent Action writers in Canada and around the world mobilized to protect Cristina Palabay. She is the Secretary General of a human rights alliance called Karapatan and she had just been told her name is on a death list. Supporters of Amnesty jumped into action and so far, she is safe. Read further for her message!
Aasia Bibi, who experienced discrimination in Pakistan, has relocated to Canada. Merzoug Touati from Algeria is free! Members of the Urgent Action Network in Toronto participated in an action for World Press Freedom Day, and more...
“I want to thank everyone who helped us in prison, and everyone around the world who called for our release. I can’t wait to get back to the news room now.”
Those are the words of Wa Lone as he left prison on May 7, 2019. He and his colleague Kyaw Soe Oo, both Reuters journalists, received a presidential pardon after serving over 500 days of a seven-year prison term.
Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people in Canada experience staggeringly high levels of violence, and for decades, government failed to acknowledge and address this human rights crisis. Indigenous women’s organizations, grassroots activists, violence survivors, and the families and loved ones of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people long called for a national inquiry to compel government to investigate and take urgent action to end the violence. Amnesty International advocated alongside Indigenous partners in calling for a national inquiry.
Young people from Grassy Narrows are travelling to Toronto for a massive rally on June 20th to focus attention to urgency of addressing the crisis of mercury poisoning facing their First Nation.
Amnesty International is urging its members and supporters to do all they can to help this vital and timely campaign.
The people of Grassy Narrows are living with the devastating consequences of a half century of mercury contamination of their rivers and lakes. The harm they’ve experienced, including erosion of culture, loss of livelihoods, and one of the worst community health crises anywhere in Canada, has been made so much worse by decades of government denial and inaction.
Last month, federal Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan visited Grassy Narrows but failed to deliver on a long promised treatment centre for mercury survivors.
This stalling and inaction is all the more shocking in light of the fact that two of the United Nations independent human rights advisors, the expert of health and the expert on toxic wastes, have now both urged Canada to take action on the mercury crisis.
Quebec Native Women was founded in 1974 to fight sex-based discrimination in the Indian Act. Forty-five years later, this discrimination persists. Amnesty International spoke with Quebec Native Women’s Legal and Policy analyst Éloïse Décoste to learn more about steps her organization is taking to end sex-based discrimination in the Indian Act once and for all. Here’s what she had to say.
TAKE ACTION NOW For people who aren’t familiar with the issue, can you please tell me how the Indian Act discriminates against Indigenous women?The Indian Act determines who is consider an Indian in the eyes of the government. Historically, an Indian* would be defined as a man, his wife, and his children. When an Indian woman married a man without Indian status, she lost her own status and could not pass her status on to her children. This was the situation until 1985.
Beyond Israel’s internationally recognized border is the Palestinian territory — the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip — which it has occupied since the 1967 war.
While Israel rejects that it’s the occupying power, there is a virtual wall-to-wall consensus among the international community — including the United Nations, the European Union, the International Court of Justice, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Canada — that the laws of occupation, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, apply in full to the Palestinian territory.
I am a Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on the situation in the Palestinian territory, and my co-author is the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. So we know that the laws of occupation are strict.
Women engaged in sex work in the Dominican Republic are routinely raped, tortured, and humiliated by police as a form of social control, and as punishment for transgressing social norms surrounding femininity and sexuality. Transgender women suffer particularly extreme forms of sexual abuse and humiliation due to the additional transphobia they face. We must demand their protection and rights now.
Amnesty International documented the stories of women that have been subjected to these abuses in “If they can have her, why can’t we?,” a report published in April 2019.
Luna’s storyIn this video, Luna explains how transphobia and homophobia in the Dominican Republic influence particular forms of gender-based violence against people like her, engaged in sex work, and how their activism has helped to bring about change.
Palestinians living in the occupied territories cannot get to work or school, or see their friends and family without feeling the disruptive effect of Israel’s military rule. It restricts the ability to farm their land, attend a protest, improve their homes, raise families, travel for medical purposes, or access essential services such as electricity and clean water.
A Palestinian prisoner’s experience is even more dire: they must not only withstand all the above, but also arbitrary detention from Israeli and Palestinian forces, cruel and unlawful treatment, the repression of fundamental human rights, and the ongoing unlawful detention of children.
For both, life is made all the more insufferable by Israel’s ever-expanding settlement operation.
On May 1, the District Court of The Hague, Netherlands, issued an interim ruling in the case brought by Esther Kiobel and three other women with regard to Shell’s involvement in the unlawful arrest, detention and execution of their husbands by the Nigerian military.
It ruled in favour of the plaintiffs: the court does have jurisdiction over the case and that this should not be time barred.
The court also ruled that Shell should hand over some confidential internal documents to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, and that they would have the opportunity to examine witnesses. The court will address the substance of the case next.
This decision marks a vital step towards justice for Esther and the others and sends important message to other victims around the world who are seeking to hold powerful corporations to account but struggle to access justice.
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