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“You look at the lake, it looks good, it looks clean, the fish look all right. How to believe that something like that could turn against you?” – former Grassy Narrows Chief Steve Fobister Sr. quoted in the Toronto Star

Steve Fobister. Bill Fobister. Judy Da Silva. These are some of the leaders and activists from Grassy Narrows who have played a critical in shaping and informing Amnesty International’s longstanding campaign for justice for that First Nation.

They are all, in every sense of the word, human rights champions.

They also, all three, suffer from the devastating, debilitating impacts of mercury poisoning.

And they are not alone.

By Rebecca Ma, Associate Campaigner, Amnesty International USA

For the past three years, fourteen-year-old Astrid and her father Arturo were living an ordinary life in Easton, Pennsylvania. She was in the eighth grade, studying at Easton Area Middle School, where her favorite subject is Math.

Less than a month before the much anticipated quinceañera celebration of her fifteenth birthday, life as Astrid knew it was turned upside down.

On February 20, at approximately 5:00 AM, Astrid was asleep in her room when she was awoken by six male Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) armed agents standing before her bed and yelling: “IMMIGRATION — GET UP!” They ordered everyone in the house into a room and asked them for identification. The ICE agents did not show a warrant or say why they were there.

Written by Laura Callaghan - Feminist Wikipedia Takeover project participant

I access Wikipedia multiple times a day. I use it for things like reminding myself who the current Ontario Minister of Education is (it’s MPP Indira Naidoo-Harris), or for looking up the climate in the coldest city on earth when I need to console myself that it’s not really that miserable in Toronto in March.

Wikipedia is the 5th most popular website on the internet. I think it’s wonderful that we have this vast open source repository of information at our fingertips, but I also find it unnerving how much power Wikipedia has to inform our understanding of the world, and our conception of what is worth knowing. 

By Maria Serrano, Campaigner on Refugee and Migrants Rights

Would you go to Afghanistan tomorrow? If you follow the news at all, the answer is probably no. Maybe you read about the truck bomb that killed at least 150 people last May, or the gunmen who stormed the offices of the charity Save the Children in January, killing four people. Perhaps you wondered how anyone could ever feel safe in Kabul after an ambulance packed with explosives blew up in a crowded street. Over 100 people died and at least 235 were injured.

If you are in Europe, it’s likely that your government would also advise you against travelling to Afghanistan, citing the high threat of kidnapping, indiscriminate attacks and clashes between armed groups.