Omar SajjadGlobal PerspectivesPeriod 6Mr. RusnakAmnesty International Research Paper Everyday people are not afforded their human rights, whether for what they believe, for doing their jobs, or for who they are. Unjustly punished and forgotten, these people have no one to help them and fight for them. This is where Amnesty International steps in and plays a role in restoring that person the human rights of which they have been deprived. Amnesty International, an organization based on the idea that “every person can enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards” (1) fights for human rights, forgotten prisoners and many other cases. The organization, supported by 3 million members in over 150 countries and territories (1), initiates petitions and protests to bring justice and human rights to the forgotten and punished. With these points in mind, is Amnesty International really useful? Although it helps to some extent, it has many flaws ranging from biases to time and effort consumed for a particular case. Amnesty International began in 1961 when a British lawyer Peter Benenson started a campaign called “Appeal for Amnesty 1961”. This campaign was the beginning of an organization that would fight for human rights and the forgotten. (2) The first campaign that started the organization and the most well-known campaigns by Amnesty International concern prisoners of conscience. Peter Benenson wrote the first definition of a prisoner of conscience and stated that “any person who is physically prevented (by imprisonment or otherwise) from expressing (in any form of words or symbols) any opinion which he honestly holds and which he does not hold. ..... half the paper ... that amount of money could have helped a lot of people and could have built infrastructure that would have improved people's lives but, like a corrupt country, it ended up in people's pockets. Although they have been heavily criticized several times, does Amnesty International help or hinder? Amnesty International has done many good deeds that have helped people and created a just society to some extent. It achieved its goal of ensuring human rights for all, and while it was criticized for some issues, overall it helped rather than hindered. In my personal opinion he helped much more and reviewed more than 47,000 documents and cases, which in turn helped the world, at least for the most part. Amnesty International is a respected organization for leading and representing human rights and in my opinion it should still be seen in this way.