Your local voice for Amnesty International
Good News World The UN Human Rights Council held a special session on ongoing human rights violations in Iran in November. An independent fact-finding mission will investigate abuses by the government there, including on the sentences of execution confirmed by the Islamic regime. According to Human Rights Watch, these sentences fall short of international human…
Continue reading Good and Bad News World
The strategy of the Qatari government has been to shift the word’s attention away from its human rights record and on to sport and culture in a process of ‘sportswashing’. Hence its successful bid to host the 2022 football World Cup. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has documented LGBT+ people being subjected to police harassment and…
Continue reading Focus on Qatar
Good News World Research by Amnesty International which included 17,000 fans from 15 countries found that almost three quarters were in favour of compensating migrant workers who suffered abuses while working in Qatar in preparation for the football World Cup. Only ten per cent opposed this. The Australian government has promised to review the current…
Continue reading Good and Bad News Update – World October 2022
You will recall the so-called ‘Colston Four’ pulled down the statue in Bristol of Edward Colston, responsible for shipping more people to be used as slaves than any other trader, in a protest against racism. All four were acquitted of causing criminal damage in January. However, in an appeal triggered by the current Home Secretary Suella Braverman when…
Continue reading Court of Appeal and the ‘Colston Four’
A panel (c.30 minutes) on Women’s Hour on 15 August with three Afghan women, one still in Kabul, discussed their lives now and the lives of women generally in Afghanistan. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb
A number of leading women have gone missing since the Taliban took power. This 23 minute documentary by Yalda Hakim focuses on one – Alia Azizi – who was a high-ranking prison officer. She in effect guarded those now in power and did not expect to go back to work but was told to return…
Continue reading Worth Watching – Our World: The Hunt for Alia
The new restrictions have shattered girls’ lives, in particular. Nine out of 10 girls said they were losing weight from lack of food and had no energy to study, play and work. The crisis is taking a toll on girls’ mental and psychosocial wellbeing, with more than a quarter showing signs of depression and/or anxiety…
Continue reading Breaking Point: Children Lives One Year under Taliban Rule – A Report by Save the Children
The evacuation effort in Kabul in August last year resulted in 16,000 Afghans reaching safety in the UK. However, in terms of housing, services and staff, the facilities available to help refugees in the past essentially no longer exist. Around 9,550 people have since been stuck in 70 hotels at the cost of £1mn per…
Continue reading Afghan Refugees and Resettlement
An investigation for openDemocracy has found that gypsy, Roma and traveller communities are being forced to live on contaminated land, by motorways and near sewage works or risk arrest. Two-thirds of the 60 short-term ‘transit’ sites in England – and just over half of the country’s 242 permanent sites – are within 100m of one…
Continue reading Criminalisation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities
This report, written in collaboration with the Fawcett Society, found that three-quarters of women of colour experience racism at work. It is the norm that they are forced to endure harmful, pervasive and entrenched racism at every stage of their career journey. As a result, many ‘change themselves’ to fit in: they change their language, their…
Continue reading Runnymede Trust Report on Racism against Women at Work: Broken Ladders