Photo: ©Demotix. By Natalia Nozadze, Amnesty International’s Researcher on Azerbaijan Baku is a city of contrasts. Elegant parks with elaborate fountains sit alongside abandoned plots of land covered with mud and rubble. Glass towers soar over the cobbled streets and winding lanes of the walled old...

Photo credit: ©MURAD SEZER/Reuters/Corbis • Amnesty International releases Annual Report along with forecast of human rights trends for the coming year • Says governments must ‘stop pretending the protection of civilians is beyond their power’ • Forecasts more civilians at risk of abuses by armed...

Governments pay lip service to the importance of protecting civilians. And yet the world’s politicians have miserably failed to protect those in greatest need. Amnesty International believes that this can and must finally change.

At least 77 people died as a result of clashes between police and protesters at Kyiv’s EuroMaydan roughly a year ago and another 1,000 were severely injured. These numbers may sound like dull statistics, but for me they were transformed into real individual stories of injustice as I attended launch...

“God save and preserve us” is written on a blackboard in one of the many ad-hoc bomb shelters in Debaltseve, a strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine. Here over a hundred people—including children and elderly pensioners—take refuge from the shelling. With the newly-signed ceasefire coming into...

On 2 April 2013, after 20 years of determined lobbying and campaigning by Amnesty International and partner NGOs, the UN General Assembly voted decisively to adopt the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) text. On 24 December 2014, the treaty is now officially becoming international law, which could save the...

1. How is a migrant different from a refugee or an asylum-seeker?A refugee has been given permission to live in another country because their own government can’t or won’t protect them from human rights abuses. An asylum-seeker has applied to stay in another country for the same reasons, but hasn’t...

By Sergei Nikitin, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director It’s common knowledge that some members of the Soviet secret services came to work for the KGB after watching films about Soviet secret agents and enemy spies. Some openly admitted it. In these films, Soviets were seen as scouts...

The decision to authorize the extradition to Russia of Kazakhstani banker and opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov by the Lyon Court of Appeal (France) has set in motion a procedure that may eventually see him forcibly returned to Kazakhstan, where he is wanted on fraud charges, Amnesty International...

On 2 April 2013, after 20 years of determined lobbying and campaigning by Amnesty International and partner NGOs, the UN General Assembly voted decisively to adopt the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) text. Now the treaty is on the cusp of becoming international law which could change the lives of...

Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, will be in New York during the 69th session of the UN General Assembly between 26-30 September. During this time he will: • Welcome the expected 50th country to ratify the Arms Trade Treaty. The 50th ratification will bring into force the...

Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, will visit Moscow from 9-10 September 2014.  The visit comes amid mounting evidence about Russia’s alleged role in the conflict in Ukraine, where Salil Shetty will be visiting on 7-8 September.  He will urge the Russian authorities to...