Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organisation says it has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. The stated mission of the organisation is to campaign for "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments." The organisation has played a notable role on human rights issues due to its frequent citation in media and by world leaders.
Amnesty International, 19 March 2011
Japanese branch of Amnesty International, 23 May 2014
Supporters of Amnesty International at Cologne Pride Parade 2014
Amnesty International sign at the WorldPride Madrid in July 2017
Human rights are moral principles, or norms, for certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly protected as substantive rights in substantive law, municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable, fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being" and which are "inherent in all human beings", regardless of their age, ethnic origin, location, language, religion, ethnicity, or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They are regarded as requiring empathy and the rule of law, and imposing an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others; it is generally considered that they should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on specific circumstances.
Magna Carta or "Great Charter" was one of the world's first documents containing commitments by a sovereign to his people to respect certain legal rights.
U.S. Declaration of Independence ratified by the Continental Congress on 4 July 1776
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly of France, 26 August 1789
"It is not a treaty... [In the future, it] may well become the international Magna Carta." Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949.