Militias allied to the Iraqi government have access to arms from at least 16 countries Recent arms transfers have fuelled enforced disappearances, abductions, torture, summary killings, and deliberate destruction of civilian property Iraq is the world’s sixth-largest importer of heavy weaponry...

Refugees in the region TAKE ACTION: Join Amnesty’s call to Syria, Iran and Russia to urgently protect civilians in Aleppo   ore than 4.8 million Syrian refugees are in just five countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt: Turkey hosts 2.7 million Syrian refugees, more than any...

By Amnesty International Staff It seems like wherever you look, people have written 2016 off as a terrible year. But thanks to you, we’ve found a lot to be positive about, too.  This year, you helped us free more than 650 people – that’s nearly two each day – from unfair and often abusive...

By Anna Neistat, Amnesty International’s senior director for research Seventeen years ago, Kofi Annan stood before the United Nations and apologized. The then-secretary-general acknowledged that the UN had failed the people of Rwanda during the 100-day genocide in which almost a million...

For the first time, Amnesty International’s flagship global human rights campaign is taking aim at a human rights case in Canada. On December 10th, activists around the world will call for a stop to the Site C hydroelectric dam in northeastern British Columbia – one in ten cases around the...

Did You Know That Your Social Media Has the Power to End Human Rights Abuses?   These days, many government bodies and heads of states have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. Some of these state authorities are the same once who have the power to end the human rights abuses at hand in this...

The condemning of 15 people to death by the Specialized Criminal Court today after a grossly unfair trial is a travesty of justice and a serious violation of human rights, said Amnesty International.  The men were among 32 people arrested across Saudi Arabia in 2013 and 2014 who were accused of...

World-renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is joining forces with Amnesty International to mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters around the world to inundate the White House with messages in support of Edward Snowden, as part of the world’s biggest human rights campaign, launched today. The...

Ezat Taheri, Mohammad Ali Taheri’s mother, sits front and centre as Amnesty International campaigner Gloria Nafziger thanks everyone for their commitment. In Amnesty International’s Toronto office there is a bookcase full of 3 inch thick non-descript black binders. Each binder contains 100...

By Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International , “I have lumps in my breasts, in my throat, and in my uterus…” – Halimeh spoke softly, but as she quickly uttered these words, I noticed an immense sadness in her dark brown eyes. We were sitting on the rocks near the...

By Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research at Amnesty International “I have lumps in my breasts, in my throat, and in my uterus…” – Halimeh spoke softly, but as she quickly uttered these words, I noticed an immense sadness in her dark brown eyes. We were sitting on the rocks near the...

By Gloria Nafziger, Amnesty International Canada’s Campaigner for Iran , Where would you spend a Sunday in July? , On Sunday July 17, the members of Amnesty International’s TriCities Group in Coquitlam BC chose to stand in solidarity with Iranian prisoner of conscience, Narges Mohammadi ,...