Amnesty International

Orange County, California, USA

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* What is Amnesty International?

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Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people acting on the conviction that governments must not deny individuals their basic Human Rights. as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its members and supporters, over a million of them throughout the world, work impartially to secure the organization's goals, called the mandate.

Promotional Mandate:

Amnesty International works to promote awareness of, and adherence to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other human rights accords.

Oppositional Mandate:

Amnesty International opposes grave violations of any person's rights. Amnesty International pressures governments and non-governmental organizations to:

• Release all prisoners of conscience: people confined because of their beliefs or because of their ethnic origin, sex, color or language, who have not used or called for violence.
• Give all prisoners whose cases have a political aspect a fair trial within a reasonable time.
• Abolish the death penalty, torture, and other cruel treatment of all prisoners.
• End all extrajudicial executions and "disappearances."

Amnesty International was founded in 1961 and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for its efforts to promote global observance of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December, 1948. Every year, this date is observed around the world as Human Rights Day. The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration establish the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of all people.

Since 1961 Amnesty International has worked on behalf of more than 45,000 prisoners around the world. In 1992 alone, over 3,000 cases involving more than 7,700 individuals were being worked on by Amnesty International. Of these, 629 were new cases. Prisoners released during the year numbered 1,041.

Amnesty International achieves its goals of protecting Human Rights through local groups and student groups who participate in the following:

• “Adopting” an action file - the group is assigned an individual case file which will include one or more of the following tasks: work for the release of a prisoner of conscience, ask for a prompt and fair trial for a political prisoner, try to find the whereabouts of a “disappeared” person, etc…
• Campaigning - gathering, assessing and distributing information on current human rights isses.
• Letter writing - contacting government officials and others through letters, faxes, e-mails.
• Education - through seminars and/or presentations