Today is the 104th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.  On this day in 1912, some 1,514 people perished in the frigid waters of the Atlantic.  That is tragedy enough but 468 of those 1,514 people drowned entirely needlessly.  There were exactly 468 empty seats in the lifeboats...

Written by Tirana Hassan, Crisis Response Director Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan has spent the last ten years living and working in conflict zones. Here she describes the events that have shaped her life.   Witnessing horrific events I have spent most of the...

Written by the Ottawa Mennonite Church Refugee Assistance Program  TAKE THE REFUGEES WELCOME HERE PLEDGE     Ottawa Mennonite Church (OMC) has been involved with refugee sponsorship since 1979, when Canadians responded to the boatloads of refugees fleeing the Vietnam War.  Mennonite Central...

By Gauri van Gulik, Deputy Director for Europe & Central Asia, Amnesty International. Follow Gauri on Twitter @gaurivangulik On 5 March 1946, in a small college gym in Missouri, Winston Churchill warned: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended...

By Gauri van Gulik, Deputy Director for Europe & Central Asia, Amnesty International. Follow Gauri on Twitter @gaurivangulik , On 5 March 1946, in a small college gym in Missouri, Winston Churchill warned: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended...

By Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International A generation from now, schoolchildren will be shown the image of a drowned three-year-old lying face down on a beach. They will look on in stunned silence, transfixed by this boy who could easily have been their little brother or a younger...

By Eliza Goroya in Kos, Greece and Khairunissa Dhala and Lorna Hayes in Berlin, Germany. From Greece to Germany, volunteers are joining forces to help newly-arrived refugees and migrants get food, clothes and medical attention – plugging glaring gaps in the EU’s broken asylum system while...

  Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified US government documents to the website WikiLeaks. Two years after she was first sentenced, Chelsea tells us why speaking out against injustice can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.   Q. Why did you decide to leak...

UPDATE May 7, 2015: After a temporary stay while an Alberta court ruled on the government’s unsuccessful attempt to seek an injunction, Omar Khadr was released today on strict bail conditions including electronic monitoring and a curfew. Omar Khadr spent over 12 years in prison following his...

By Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research, Amnesty International , The long-awaited fifth season of Game of Thrones begins on Sunday, April 12. Broadcast in 170 countries, the show shocks viewers and generates controversy with graphic violence, especially against women. , Yet many aspects of...

By Anna Neistat, Senior Director for Research, Amnesty International The long-awaited fifth season of Game of Thrones begins on Sunday, April 12. Broadcast in 170 countries, the show shocks viewers and generates controversy with graphic violence, especially against women. Yet many aspects of real...

By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexNeveAmnesty There is so much packed into the government’s current national security law reform, it is hard to know where to focus.  Bills C-44 and C-51, currently before Parliament, constitute the most...