Throughout its history, Amnesty International has won critical protections for individuals and systemic change affecting millions, including:
- Immigrants and asylum-seekers have been freed after we campaigned against their unjust detention for exercising their human rights, and people seeking safety were welcomed to new homes in the U.S.
- We garnered the public support necessary for the adoption of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
- We generated the global support necessary to create the International Criminal Court, so that those responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity will face justice.
- Our decades-long campaign has led to the death penalty being abolished in law or practice in two-thirds of the world’s countries – a sea change from when we started this work the 1970s, when only 16 countries had abolished capital punishment.
Most recently in 2019-20, Amnesty International USA contributed to the following human rights victories:
- Helped free Sadat, Alejandra, Astrid and Arturo, and many others from immigration detention; welcomed seven families from Afghanistan and El Salvador through community sponsorship, contributed to the closure and unrenewed contract of the Homestead detention facility for migrant children; and helped resettle the Amari family from Syria.
- Introduction of Safe from the Start Act in Congress, in collaboration with partners to end gender-based violence globally.
- Helped increase transparency and accountability by the U.S. Department of Defense by in-depth research and reporting on civilian deaths and injuries caused by U.S. military actions, and sustained advocacy with both DoD and Congress.
- Passage of the Uyghur Human Rights and Policy Act Rights and Policy Act to become a law, as part of Amnesty’s ongoing advocacy efforts to highlight the human rights abuses by the Chinese government against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China.
