Below you’ll find breaking news as well as reports, updates on our campaigns, and victories.
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Report
Amnesty International State of the World 2015-2016
International protection of human rights is in danger of unravelling as short-term national self-interest and draconian security crackdowns have led to a wholesale assault on basic freedoms and rights, warned Amnesty International as it launched its annual assessment of human rights around the world. “Your rights are in jeopardy: they are being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world,” said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
February 18, 2016
Press Release
Sierra Leone’s President Must Sign Bill Allowing Safe Abortions
Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma, should sign into law a bill that would increase women’s access to safe and legal abortion, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today in a letter they and five Sierra Leonean rights groups 50/50, AdvocAid, Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law, IPAS Sierra Leone, and Wi Di Uman Dem Coalition sent to President Koroma.
February 4, 2016
Press Release
Female refugees face physical assault, exploitation and sexual harassment on their journey through Europe
Governments and aid agencies are failing to provide even basic protections to women refugees traveling from Syria and Iraq. New research conducted by Amnesty International shows that women and girl refugees face violence, assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their journey, including on European soil.
January 15, 2016
Press Release
Northern Ireland: Time for Change as Abortion Law Declared Breach of Human Rights
Amnesty International has called for an urgent change in abortion law in Northern Ireland after a judgment by Belfast’s High Court today declared existing law in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
December 16, 2015
Press Release
Women from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland Had almost 25,000 Abortions in England and Wales over the Last Five Years
New data shows that almost 25,000 women from across Ireland, north and south, travelled to have abortions in England and Wales – an average of close to 100 terminations every week over the past five years.
December 14, 2015
Press Release
Dominican Republic takes women’s rights back to 1884
The Dominican Republic has taken a drastic step backwards for women’s human rights as the Constitutional Court struck down reforms to the Penal Code that would have decriminalized abortion in certain cases, Amnesty International warned today.
December 3, 2015
Press Release
El Salvador’s total abortion ban sentences children and families to trauma and poverty
El Salvador’s extreme anti-abortion law is having a devastating effect on the lives of scores of children whose mothers, having suffered miscarriages or other obstetric emergencies, are being held behind bars accused of having illegal abortions, said Amnesty International in a new report today.
November 30, 2015
Press Release
Northern Ireland: Amnesty Welcomes Landmark Court Decision on Abortion Law
Amnesty International has welcomed today’s Belfast High Court decision in a Judicial Review case which found that laws governing abortion in Northern Ireland in cases of serious malformation of the foetus and sexual crime are in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
November 30, 2015
Press Release
Chile: Urgent progress needed on right to decide after young woman arrested for a clandestine abortion
The arrest of a 22-year-old woman in Temuco for “consensual abortion” is yet another sign that the Chilean authorities have no time to lose with advancing legislation in the works to decriminalize abortion, Amnesty International said today.
November 13, 2015
Press Release
4,000 women and girls abandoned by the Irish State every year
Today in Dublin, Amnesty International activists from around the world staged a protest against Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws outside the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister). Delegates brought 80 suitcases to signify the number of Irish women and girls who travel abroad each and every week to access a safe and legal abortion.
August 6, 2015
Press Release
Burkina Faso – Elections cannot ignore women’s crisis
Burkina Faso must urgently tackle the nationwide crisis where forced and early marriage, unwanted pregnancy and lacking sex education reduce hundreds of thousands of girls and women to second class citizens.
July 15, 2015
Press Release
Two-Thirds Majority in Ireland Want Abortion Decriminalized
The Irish government is under growing pressure to reform its anti-abortion law, one of the most restrictive in the world, Amnesty International said today as it published results of an opinion poll on public attitudes to abortion in Ireland.
July 7, 2015