What is the Urgent Action Network?
The concept is simple: Take Action, Change a Life.
Urgent Actions ask our community of volunteers to flood the mailboxes, inboxes, phones and social media of authorities when someone is in imminent danger of human rights violations. Your letters, emails, phone calls, faxes and Tweets have helped to halt executions, support human rights defenders and free prisoners of conscience—people jailed solely for the peaceful expression of their beliefs and identity.
Please note that the US postal service has suspended service to some countries in light of COVID-19 – reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions.
How Does It Work?
STEP 1: Sign Up Today!
Sign up to receive Urgent Action emails. You can choose to receive all emails or a more limited number. You can also choose to receive emails on specific issues or regions.
STEP 2: Take Action Now!
Urgent Action emails specify the case, local and international government officials to contact, their contact information and suggestions about what to write, say or Tweet.
Our Educator’s Guide
Are you an educator looking for ways to engage your students in human rights? Find out how your students can show their power through letter writing!
In many cases, your action on these cases leads to better conditions for prisoners and their eventual release. Those individuals at the center of these Urgent Actions often send their thanks to Amnesty International, citing that these messages serve as a source of hope.
Browse Urgent Actions
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Jailed Iranian Kurdish Woman Tortured (Iran: UA 151.14)
Ministry of Intelligence agents are torturing Iranian Kurdish woman Zeynab Jalalian by deliberately denying her health care to coerce her into providing a videotaped “confession”. This intentional denial of health…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Activist to Stand Trial for Her Drawings (Russian Federation: UA 138.20)
The trial against Yulia Tsvetkova, an artist and human rights activist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in the Russian Far East, is expected to start at the beginning of February. If convicted, she…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Retrial Ordered for Singer on Death Row (Nigeria: UA 137.20)
On 21 January, an Appeal Panel ordered the case of 22-year-old Yahaya Sharif-Aminu be retried by a different judge on the basis that he was not represented by a legal…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action: Attack on Sexual and Reproductive Rights (Honduras: UA 9.21)
On 21 January, the Honduran Congress approved the first reading of a bill that would reform the Constitution to increase the number of votes needed to change the articles that…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action: German-Iranian Woman Arbitrarily Detained (Iran: UA 8.21)
Nahid Taghavi, a 66-year-old German-Iranian national, has been arbitrarily detained in Tehran’s Evin prison since 16 October 2020. She has serious medical conditions, including diabetes and high blood pressure, placing…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action: Indigenous Leader Shot (Guatemala: UA 7.21)
On 16 January 2021, Xinca defender Julio David González Arango was shot by an armed man on a property he owns in Mataquescuintla, a town in the Jalapa department, south-east…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action: Kazakh Family at Risk of Torture in Detention (China: UA 4.21)
Weilina Muhatai and her two sons, Muheyati Haliyoula and Parisati Haliyoula, have been missing since August 2020. As ethnic Kazakhs living in China’s Xinjiang region, their possible detention is thought…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Thirteen Federal Executions in Six Months (USA: UA 26.20)
Three people, including one woman, were executed in the last week of the Trump administration, bringing the total number of federal executions carried out in the last six months to…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action: Lack of Oxygen to Treat Patients in Manaus (Brazil: UA 5.21)
Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas State, is facing a health crisis due to a spike in COVID-19 infections coupled with what health workers, media outlets and state officials have…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Two Years of Arbitrary Detention of 16 People (Mozambique: UA 78.19)
17 January marks two years that fifteen asylum seekers and refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and one refugee from Ethiopia, have been arbitrarily detained in Pemba, northeast…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Execution Risk for Iranian-Swedish Academic (Iran: UA 38.17)
Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali has been held incommunicado in Tehran’s Evin prison since 24 November 2020, when he learned that his death sentence for “corruption on earth” (efsad-e fel-arz) was…
Urgent Action
Urgent Action Update: Lengthy Imprisonment for Retired Uyghur Doctor (China: UA 88.20)
Retired Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in a secret trial for “taking part in organized terrorism, aiding terrorist activities and seriously disrupting social order” in…