How did human rights become international?
The project ‘Making Amnesty international’ answers this question through the lens of one of the most well-known human rights organisations in the world. By examining what being an international organisation meant to Amnesty’s (mainly European) leadership, as well as why people across the global South decided to join, it constructs a global history of cross-border collaborations and the challenges of internationalism. It shows the way that many serious divisions in the world - between North and South, but also between different communities and identity groups within nation states - persisted during the late twentieth century, a time generally considered to be one of rapid globalisation and increasing connections, and why various activists thought it important to overcome them.
The project centres the activists that drove Amnesty forward between the years 1961 and 2001. In telling their stories, it also examines the various contexts that these activist came from, placing Amnesty and human rights in a social movement context.
Explore
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![A poster for an 'amnesty' protest in Antwerp, 1959]()
Calling for Amnesty across Europe
Antwerp 1961
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![An image of Martin Ennals]()
A reorientation towards the Third World
London, 1968
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Amnesty in South Asia: conflicting strategies
Colombo, 1975
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![An image of a poster for a French campaign for political prisoners in Cameroun]()
Mongo Beti and the place of exiles in Amnesty
Paris, 1978
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![An image of Gerson Gu Konu]()
Building Amnesty structures across Africa
Freetown, 1991
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![An Amnesty USA poster about the death penalty]()
Amnesty's US section and the shift on 'own country' work
California, 1980s-1990s
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![An image made for Amnesty by Fernando Botero]()
Amnesty in Latin America in the shadow of their own success
Bogotá, 1992
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![An image of a May Day rally in the Philippines, 1987]()
From dictatorship to democracy
Manila, 1987
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![Cultural relativism]()
Human rights, North-South interactions and cultural relativism
Tehran 1968
Archival collections & sources for researching Amnesty
There is space for so much more work to be done both on Amnesty and on human rights, using Amnesty as a lens. In the spirit of more open and collaborative research practices, here you can find guides to the sources used in this project. You can also access a selection of the oral history interviews conducted as part of this project, and use them for your own research.
Funding & other support
Horizon 2020
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101031140
KADOC: Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society
The MSCA Fellowship was carried out at KADOC, KU Leuven, Belgium
School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
SSPS provided invaluable financial support and institutional environment for the beginning of this project
Other writing
Contact
If you have been a member of Amnesty and want to contribute your story to the oral history project, get in touch. Or for any other reason, really!
archive and research
archival services
Do you need archival work done in The Netherlands, or elsewhere in Europe? We recommend this research service.