Amnesty International Warns of Massive Breach of Human Rights

In its annual assessment of human rights around the world, Amnesty International has warned that international protection of human rights is in danger of unravelling, as short-term national self-interest and draconian security crackdowns have led to a wholesale assault on basic freedoms and rights.

The AI SecGen Salil Shetty said that people’s rights are in jeopardy, being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world.

He continued that Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national ‘values.'

The organization’s report speaks of an insidious and creeping trend undermining human rights which has come from governments deliberately attacking, underfunding or neglecting institutions that have been set up to help protect rights.

The AI is calling on governments to politically support and fully fund the systems that already exist to uphold international law and to protect people’s rights.

The US-based organization for human rights has documented how many governments have brazenly broken international law in 2015 in their national contexts.

“More than 98 states tortured or otherwise ill-treated people and 30 or more illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger. In at least 18 countries, war crimes or other violations of the “laws of war” were committed by governments or armed groups.”

“The misguided reaction of many governments to national security threats has been the crushing of civil society, the right to privacy and the right to free speech.”

AI states the United Nations and its offices for protecting human rights and refugees have suffered severely from the hostility and neglect of recalcitrant governments in 2015.

“The UN was set up to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ and to ‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights’ but it is more vulnerable than it ever has been in the face of enormous challenges.”

According to the report, the Syrian conflict is one horrific example of the catastrophic human consequences of a systemic failure of the UN to fulfil its vital role in upholding rights and international law and ensuring accountability.

Zviad Adzinbaia

Edited by Chloe Diamond 

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