Ahmed Khaleel, an Iraqi citizen who is taking a PhD at York University, gave a talk about Arab poets as human-rights defenders for the Scarborough group of Amnesty International. Dr Jay Prosser, reader in humanities at Leeds University, spoke about his recent co-authored book, Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis. Royalties from his book sales are being donated to Amnesty.
The seminar, at Hull University’s Scarborough campus, was attended by more than 40 people including the deputy mayor, Helen Mallory, who said: “The work Amnesty is doing now is as valuable as it’s always been but possibly more so because there are more human-rights violations taking place around the world. Their work will be neverending because, sadly, atrocities will always be committed. I’m quite humbled by the work they do.”
Not world-shocking news perhaps but a fine example of the day to day work for HRDs that local groups can do…
source: Amnesty seminar on human rights – News – Scarborough Evening News.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
December 7, 2011 at 09:03
Do you think the mayor is right? Are there really ‘more human rights violations taking place around the world’ than there were in the early days of Amnesty, or are we just better able to see them in a computer world?
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December 7, 2011 at 12:50
I think you are quite right. It is hard to know whether there are more or less violations as we simply know more today than before. I myself would guess that there is overall less but that is of course small consolation to the individual victims. I suspect that the mayor’s speech was more motivational than the result of in-depth research..Hans
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