Ayesha Waris

Raise your voice for what matters: Amnesty International

Abbreviations:
AI Amnesty International
Abstract:
All human beings are equally entitled to basic human rights based on the norms of dignity for the individual
and cannot be violated or altered and are protected by various laws and constitutions.70 years have passed
since the declaration of human rights but violence still occur with distressing regularity, to make sure that
such violations are not passed by unnoticed human rights organizations work impartially and independently
of any political and government influence. AI is a well renowned organization which fights against
violations of human rights in accordance with declaration of human rights. Anyone can become a part of
their global movement and take action on urgent matters. People can help by staging peaceful protest,
making donations or contacting authorized personnel’s urging them to act on sensitive issues. Majority of
work on action form is done by group level. AI has established new procedures for quickly responding to
human rights crises. Global media and new technology plays a vital role in inspiring people to act in defense
of human rights.
Introduction:
Human beings have their rights as individuals which cannot be violated and are protected by various laws
and constitutions. These rights cannot be subjected to alteration, they promote equality, freedom of speech
irrespective of his faith, color, sex, race or any other status. Sadly, our country has failed to protect these
rights, people who are subjected to cruel activities mostly include minorities, women, transgender and
children. Where the local government fails to protect basic human rights, amnesty international portrays its
role to make sure that human rights are not neglected.
If people of a society face injustice or see it happening around them and their government cannot protect
them, one can join amnesty international, report the matter to respective group to gain local community
support or start a petition and spread it through social contacts to get that matter to Supreme Court. Apart
from regional issues, amnesty international aids to defend individuals wherever liberty, justice, self-worth,
is denied, on a global scale. They work diligently for a change so that others can have liberty. Amnesty
international limitless efforts encouraged me to choose this topic. Anybody can become a part of their
global movement and take action on urgent matters. People can help by staging peaceful protest, making
donations or contacting authorized personnel’s urging them to act on sensitive issues.
Firstly, a brief introduction of the importance of human rights and the vital role played by the amnesty
international for the protection of these rights will be given. After that the previous research conducted to
understand the working of amnesty international will be evaluated. On the basis of the evaluation, a
questionnaire survey will be formulated along with the limitations of the approach used. The outcome from
surveys will then analyzed and the ways in which this research differs from previously conducted research
will be explicitly stated. Then the overall results from the surveys and how these results link to the research
will be described. At the end, a brief overview of all the work done during the research will be given and
the whole research will be concluded.

Literature review:
The main point for this research is to describe different ways to help people. I decided to choose AI, “a well
renowned international organization for protection of human rights”. Now, the hypothesis developed was
to determine how AI helps people and what could others do to contribute towards their cause. This review

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will highlights the important aspects of AI campaigning, how their members handle different matters and
the way in which others can help. Amnesty international mobilizes its action through strategic campaigning.
Firstly, get everyone on the common ground for choosing a starting point, reviewing alternative scenarios
for the attainment of a desired situation and looking out for possible opportunities, strength, threats and
flaws of a matter or in an association and ;finally, choosing the best action plan to mobilize that strategy to
action. [1]
There are a variety of standard ways for taking action at various levels from its members, which are
collectively known as action forms, they cover all features of campaigning varying from large number of
faxes, letters, and telegrams of action for urgent matters to the firm activities of native AI groups on Action
Archives or other intensive global efforts of state campaigns. Each action form is intended to be part of a
united strategy on a country or issue. These action forms are evaluated on a regular basis to check their
impact and if they don’t seem to be working switch to another course of action or pressure the authorities
to do the right thing by lobbying. [2]
Anyone can contribute towards the working of AI either by joining a local community group, signing a
petition, becoming a youth activist, become a volunteer, make donations, and inform your local community
groups of matters involving human rights violation. AI groups act as representatives of authorized units of
the association, and almost all of important work of AI is completed at group level. These groups meet on
a regular basis to plan and devise into action the work that they intend to do for AI. They also work on
specific matters allocated to the group, which includes making pleas either for an individual or a group.
Amnesty international responds on individual’s basis whenever an individual human rights are violated. If
these violations continue to be prevalent, amnesty international responds by analyzing the pattern of these
violations. The patterns formed will concentrate on AI’s country policies, which will result in a massive
state movement or a worldwide movement if necessary.
AI is dependent on information and feedback, large amount of information is gathered from the
international secretariat by means of fax, e-mail or by post. Member should keep themselves aware of the
local social, economic, political development and international current affairs, the information gathered by
the members is used to create the context of sector campaigning. Whereas the feedback acts as a boosting
and motivating agent for members and other people involved by giving them good news and success stories
of other campaigns. [3]

Methodology:
AI provides an international handbook, manuals to members, other people to guide them of general
practices, working methods and policies. From an extensive range of accomplishments of AI, this research
is focused on how AI helps people and how others can make their contributions towards AI. The existing
literature focuses on more crucial issues concerned with human rights worldwide, while this study does not
goes into detailed issues but rather gives a general idea of how these issues are tackled.
The most suitable method for answering the research questions would be a quantitative method. A
questionnaire survey with approximately ten basic questions regarding the knowledge of AI would be
distributed among different participants. The questionnaire would be developed via google survey forms
and would be sent to different universities students at random. The survey would be kept anonymous. The
questions would examine if students know about working of AI and if they would like to be a part of any
human rights organization and their contribution towards promotion of human rights. Afterwards all the
data would be gathered and analyzed in order to answer research questions.

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Online surveys have their perks and drawbacks, one might not get the number of responses that they had
hoped for. Although the survey questions are kept basic, some people might not be able to understand the
context of questions. Some of the responses might lack honesty. Another major issue could be the time
constraint, due to limitation of time many people might not be able to submit their responses, which would
result in compact sample data and the results could be established upon viewpoint of a very few people.

Data Analysis/Discussion:
Now on the basis of the results gathered from questionnaires, data will be analyzed to interpret the
significance of the results. To check if people have any prior knowledge regarding AI, the first question
asked participants if they know AI, to which 57.1% responded “yes” and 42.9% responded “no”.

Next question was if anyone had used the platform of AI to voice their opinion on any matter, to which
majority responded “no” and only a few said “yes”. From which one participated in a campaign against
death penalty and another one supported the campaign for stopping bombing on Yemen by coalition forces

The next question was to determine if any of the participants were a part of any human rights organization
and how they help towards completion of their objectives. None of the participants responded yes.
To follow up with the previous question, the next question was to determine if any of them intended to join
a human right organization and if they did, what could be the motivation behind that decision. 20%
responded no or not sure, and the rest of them wanted to be part of such organizations with responses
comparable to, “want to help people”, “betterment of human lives” and “it’s something our country lacks
in”.

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The next question asked contestants to give their opinion on promotion of human rights. The answers
showed different perspective of people regarding these rights some think that these rights should not be
neglected, negligence of these rights could lead to chaos, while some were focused on making people aware
of their rights as individuals. A few made compelling propositions for why human rights should not be
neglected such as, “Human rights don't require reasons for being promoted, and they’re a necessity. There
should be no arguments why they shouldn't be promoted. As humans, ourselves, we should strive for a
better society, betterment of health worldwide and everyone living a fulfilling and productive life with no
need based requirement stopping them from acquiring a good life”. While most of the responses highlighted
the positive aspects, some people also think that promotion of human rights is a hijacked promotion, to
divert attention of people from the main motives.
AI campaigns are held worldwide so the next question was to inquire if the participants have ever seen or
heard of AI campaigns in their territory, to which 85.7% said “no” and only 14.3% said “yes”.

AI campaigns rely on social media to a great extent. One can easily start a petition and forward it to friends,
relatives and others to sign the petition and forward it further to get attention of local government and get
that matter sorted. So the next question was to find out if any of contestants ever received a request to join
a petition launched by AI. The responses to this question were 100% “no”.
The next query asked contestants preceding to their knowledge of the kind of work being done by AI, would
they ever want to be a part of AI. 100% contestants responded they might join AI in the future depending
on the circumstances.
Non-government organization are dependent on funding from government and others. AI has started many
campaigns which required people to donate for great causes like, ending famine, providing aid to natural
disaster relief camps. So, the next question asked participants if they have ever made donations to AI or
any other human rights organization. 83.3% responded, “Yes” and 16.7% said, “yes, but not to AI”.
In recent years, a lot of bogus charities have scammed people so the next query was to find out how many
people find charitable organizations reliable. There were mixed responses some think these organizations
only exist to get funding from government, while some find these organization very reliable. A very few
people find these organization reliable to some extent.

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The final question was to determine if the participants witnessed a situation where human rights were
violated, would they report it to AI or any other organization. For this question the answers ranged from,
“they don’t know how they would report such event”, “because I would not have tolerated any violation
when it comes to me, so any member of the society doesn’t get his or her rights, I will definitely play my
part to help them get their rights”, “I really would want to do so since they are a well-recognized
organization worldwide but I haven't seen them functioning in Pakistan so probably it is not possible at the
moment”, “Yes as I condemn any violation against human rights”.

Research Findings:
From data analysis, it is established that since almost half of the participants did not know about AI, AI
should promote their campaign on various university grounds and try to engage more students in their
campaigns because they have more impact on society than anyone else. If people are not aware of the
exertions made by AI for the betterment of human lives and the large scales at which human rights are
violated around the globe, they will not support the cause AI stands for. Their websites provides a
comprehensive of information regarding AI accomplishments, member recruitments, campaigns etc. what
these websites lack is personnel encounter. People need motivation, they need to hear the positive feedback
of the cases undertaken by AI, urging them to make contributions towards their society.
For the matter of how other people can contribute towards AI, participants were asked question whether
they have made any donations or done any work in human rights organization. Hundred percent of the
participants had made donations to various charities, a few of which do not find charitable organizations
reliable and showed positive feedback for wanting to be a part of AI. The only problem is that they do not
know the procedure for joining. In literature review, all details on how to become a member, make
donations, start a petition, join a local group were provided. The most convenient way is to simply visit
their official site and view what kind of campaigns are going around in your region.
The results depict that people were not hesitant to raising their voice against violation of human rights, they
just lack the guidance and information of current affairs. People should know the rights they have as an
individual and should speak out if these rights are violated and if matters do not resolve, use the platform
provided by AI to get international support.

Future research paths:

Further research can be done on this certain topic with an extensive sample data, adding more queries to
the questionnaire and reaching out to the people who have benefitted from amnesty’s efforts and joining a
case to figure out how things are done properly. Analyzing different cases from time to time to compare
performances and including that in future work.

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Conclusion:
With Pressure, persuasion and information being the essential constituents for the deployment of human
rights movement, amnesty international has had quite a reputation for fighting human rights violation
worldwide. Though there are many cases where human rights violations went unreported or unresolved, the
number of cases where AI has been successfully combating for decades act as hope for those who are
suffering. The reliance of AI on information links it with its active members who are on the lookout for
incidents wherever human rights are violated. Adaptation to changing rules, diversity and flexibility serves
as a significant aspect for AI success. The legal standards arise at a later point to press for government
accountability. The influence of universal declaration of human rights can surpass the void between the
international and national efforts for human rights.
“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world” [4]
(UDHR, 1)

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References

[1] A. I. Publications, "amnesty international," 1997, p. 368.

[2] A. I. Publications, "Amnesty International Handbook," may, 2002.

[3] S. Hopgood, in Keepers of the Flame, May 2013.

[4] U. Nations, Universal declaration of human rights, 1948.