Amnesty International’s latest annual report presented a bleak picture of human rights around the world. The international organization has also criticized Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis.
“Probably 2015 is one of the worst years in recent times that I can recall,” Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty said in an interview with DW
“I feel that humanity is dead,” a Yemeni woman says, as she stands amid the ruins of what was once a school, gesturing at the rubble. “For a place of learning to be hit in this way, without warning.”
Yemen – along with Syria, Libya and other Middle Eastern and African states – features prominently in Amnesty International’s annual report, released Wednesday. Armed conflicts in those countries have killed thousands of people and driven millions from their homes, sparking a refugee crisis with global ramifications.
“The very system which was created to protect human rights – a system which has been built up over the last 70 years – is itself under threat.”
No region in the world goes unmentioned in Amnesty’s latest annual report. The human rights violations recorded in the document range from the persecution and abduction of activists in Latin America and Asia, to executions in the United States, and the devastating civil wars in Africa and the Middle East that have displaced millions.
“On the one hand states have become more repressive, they are using counterterrorism as an argument to do mass surveillance and repression and take shortcuts on human rights, but on the other hand they are doing this because people are standing up for their rights,” he said.
‘Humanity undermined’
European nations remain deeply divided over how to handle the immigration crisis. In Germany, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under increasing pressure over its open door policy towards refugees.
More than 1 million asylum seekers entered the country last year, and there have been calls for limits to be imposed. Germany’s Amnesty chief said that while she understands these concerns, the idea of limiting numbers shouldn’t sweep aside human rights, which guarantee the individual right to seek asylum in another country.
Caliskan also took issue with the German government’s new asylum package, which classifies Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria as “safe countries of origin” – making it easier for authorities to reject asylum applications from those countries’ citizens. She says the new measures also ultimately erode rights that allowed family reunification for minors and protection for traumatized refugees. Those developments, according to Caliskan, will have a troubling impact on society.