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Press Release

Yesterday afternoon, as President Biden gave the first press conference of his term where he touched on key immigration issues, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) held a virtual discussion on the reintroduction of the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a trans asylum-seeker and activist, and experts from the National Immigrant Justice Center, Detention Watch Network and the Women’s Refugee Commission.

March 26, 2021

Update

Statement from Amnesty International USA highlights multiple crises being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and why addressing all of them: the economic, political and social human rights and immediate health crisis will be essential to defeating the crisis.     Statement from Amnesty International USA on the COVID-19 Crisis in Africa For the House Africa Subcommittee March 17, 2021 Prepared by Adotei Akwei, Dep. Director Advocacy and Government Relations, AIUSA Chairwoman Bass, Ranking Member Smith and member of the subcommittee on  Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, on behalf of the 10 million members, supporters and activists…

March 18, 2021

Update

Amnesty International and NGO coalition call for Biden Administration to incorporate college- and university-based sponsorship initiatives as a critical component of expanding opportunities for U.S. institutions to sponsor refugees formally.       March 9, 2021 The Honorable Antony Blinken                                                                                             The Honorable Norris Cochran U.S. Department of State               …

March 11, 2021

Press Release

Amnesty International defines a prisoner of conscience (POC) as a person who has been deprived of their liberty solely because of their conscientiously held beliefs, or for discriminatory reasons relating to their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, or other identity, who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred. Claims that Amnesty's decision on Aleksei Navalny was a response to external pressure are untrue and ignore our longstanding and detailed internal policy.

February 25, 2021

Report

Since the current human rights erupted in Nicaragua in 2018, the government has clamped down on all forms of dissent or criticism. The authorities have pursued a policy of eradicating, at any cost, activism and the defense of human rights, said Amnesty International in a new report published today.

February 15, 2021

Press Release

Amnesty International USA is launching the Mustafa Kassem Fellowship named after the detained U.S. citizen who died in an Egyptian prison one year ago. Today would have been his 56th birthday.

February 11, 2021

Press Release

Responding to executive actions addressing regional migration and border processing and creation of an interagency task force on family reunification, Bob Goodfellow, the Interim Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, said: On family reunification: “Reuniting the more than 5,400 children who were brutally separated from their parents is not an option: it is the only path forward after a policy that inflicted such irreparable harm to families. We cannot forget that decades of anti-human rights policies have contributed to a climate that inflicted cruelty on people seeking safety in this country. As Vice-President, Joe Biden had a role to play…

February 2, 2021

Update

The Board of Amnesty International USA has written to the Trump administration  and to the incoming Biden administration to urge the United States to prioritize political and diplomatic efforts to address the human rights and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia following the conflict in the country's Tigray region.   December 9, 2020 The Honorable Michael Pompeo Secretary of State U.S. State Department 2201 C Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20230 Dear Secretary of State Pompeo, On behalf of the 10 million members, supporters and activists of Amnesty International around the world, we write to you to urge you to prioritize addressing the…

December 18, 2020

Press Release

ICE plans to begin deporting 26 Black and Brown families with young children who are incarcerated by ICE at the Berks and Dilley family detention centers today, December 18. Earlier this week, a federal court in Washington D.C. lifted the stay of removal that had been protecting these families from being deported. National advocacy groups and members of Congress are calling on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to review the families’ asylum claims, which were wrongly denied under Trump administration policies which have since been overturned by federal courts.  They are also calling on the Department of Homeland…

December 18, 2020

Press Release

Abusive policing and excessive reliance on law enforcement to implement COVID-19 response measures have violated human rights and in some instances made the health crisis worse, Amnesty International said today.

December 16, 2020

Press Release

In advance of Human Rights Day, Amnesty International will host a virtual briefing on the human rights challenges expected in 2021. The briefing will focus on the human rights crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Hundreds in the Tigray region have lost their lives, many more have been injured, and tens of thousands of people have been forced into refugee camps in neighboring Sudan. 

December 7, 2020

Update

Ethiopia’s internal turmoil reached new heights as the Federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Mohammed launched a full-scale military offensive against the TPLF led regional government of the state of Tigray. Both sides have accused each other of atrocities and Amnesty confirmed a  massacre  where possibly as many as 500 people in Tigray were slaughtered by forces loyal to the TPLF. On November 30, the Ethiopian government announced it had captured Mekelle, the capital of Tigray and that fighting has ended. With communications to the region still cut, and allegations of human rights abuses coming from both sides verifying information,…

December 2, 2020