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Press Release

Amnesty International USA welcomes the Biden Administration’s announcement to extend and redesignate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 470,000 Venezuelans currently in the United States. Over 7 million Venezuelans have fled Venezuela due to the complex humanitarian emergency and widespread human rights violations being committed in the country. This announcement is a critical recognition of the protection needs of Venezuelans, to ensure they have the ability to work and build lives in the United States without fear of deportation.  The Biden Administration’s move is an important victory for the Venezuelan community as well as organizers and state and local officials…

September 21, 2023

Press Release

The international community must pursue pathways for justice at the international level to address systemic impunity for Iranian officials responsible for hundreds of unlawful killings of protesters and widespread torture, Amnesty International said today, as Iran marks the one-year anniversary of the “Woman Life Freedom” uprising.  Over the past year, Iranian authorities have committed a litany of crimes under international law to eradicate any challenge to their iron grip on power. These include hundreds of unlawful killings; the arbitrary execution of seven protesters; tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests; widespread torture, including rape of detainees; widespread harassment of victims’ families…

September 13, 2023

Press Release

Ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, Daphne Eviatar, the director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA said: “We commemorate this anniversary with deep sorrow. Twenty-two years have passed since the horrific attacks of September 11, and survivors and victims’ families have yet to see any justice or accountability for this crime against humanity." “The military commissions created at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in the wake of the attacks have not brought justice to anyone. Instead, they have circumvented U.S. and international law and abused…

September 7, 2023

Press Release

On August 29, 2023, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and 16 additional civil society organizations delivered a letter urging U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to encourage the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government to immediately and unconditionally release Emirati human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor ahead of the 28th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) that will take place from November 30 to December 12, 2023. In the letter, the organizations urged Secretary Blinken to call on the UAE government to immediately and unconditionally release Ahmed Mansoor…

August 30, 2023

Update

On 16 May, Amnesty International released its annual Death Sentences and Executions report which documents the global developments on the use of the death penalty in 2022. As the restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic began to wane in 2022, Amnesty International documented a spike in known executions around the world, with sharp increases in Iran and Saudi Arabia. The USA was no exception to this spike, seeing its execution numbers increase by 64% despite remaining at historically low levels. US exceptionalism on the death penalty was also perpetuated as the country was the lone executing country in…

August 4, 2023

Press Release

Responding to reports of family separation and more deaths - including the death of a child - at the buoys in the Rio Grande River as part of Texas Governor Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, Amy Fischer, Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights at Amnesty International USA, said: “Governor Abbott’s spectacularly cruel Operation Lonestar (OLS) will continue to result in loss of life, family separation, and other violations of human rights as long as it exists. OLS is callous at its core, with a clear aim to cause lasting harm to vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers at any cost. It must…

August 3, 2023

Report

Amnesty International calls on regional and international powers to respond to the scale of the Sudan conflict.

August 3, 2023

Press Release

“COP28 will not bring about the ambitious action required to avert a climate catastrophe if the host state’s laws restrict freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and throttle civil society.”

August 3, 2023

Press Release

In response to reports about Texas DPS troops receiving instructions to push children into the Rio Grande and deny water to asylum seekers, Amy Fischer, Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights at Amnesty International USA said: “Amnesty International USA would like to remind Governor Abbott that seeking asylum is a human right, and these attempts to block people seeking safety from exercising that right by embracing cruel, deadly tactics is utterly shameful. Border barriers and fencing only serve to push people to take more dangerous routes to seek safety. That reality coupled with instructions for frontline officers to push children…

July 18, 2023

Press Release

"The Biden Administration must understand that any decision enabling the broader use of cluster bombs in this war will likely lead to one predictable outcome: the further death of civilians.”

July 6, 2023

Press Release

Cameroonian authorities must act to end the violence against the population and conduct thorough investigations into the killings, acts of torture, rapes, burning of houses and other atrocities committed in the Anglophone regions, said Amnesty International today in a damning new report that details rampant human rights violations and other crimes under domestic law committed by multiple actors in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.

July 3, 2023

Press Release

This week the US Treasury Department notified Congress that based on a State Department assessment, it no longer believes that the Ethiopian government is engaging in a “pattern of gross violations of human rights,” paving the way for the Treasury Department to engage on Ethiopia with economic aid institutions, including the International Monetary Fund. In March, Secretary Antony Blinken announced a US government atrocity determination that all parties to the conflict in northern Ethiopia committed war crimes. It found that the Ethiopian National Defense Forces, Eritrean Defense Forces and Amhara forces also committed crimes against humanity, “including murder, rape, and…

June 30, 2023