A Letter from the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA

Women Human Rights Defenders

This month on our website, we spotlight the all-important work of four extraordinary women who have made a difference. Two of them are among the twelve women who have received the Nobel Peace Prize. One woman, Mexico’s Digna Ochoa gave her life for her cause. And another will receive Amnesty International USA’s highest award next month. All have sacrificed much for the rights and well-being of others.
Read about these women. »

On every continent, women are rising up to end the abuse, torture and neglect that has long plagued their communities. Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi aroused an entire nation against decades of corruption and abuse. “It is not power that corrupts,” she has said, “but fear.”

Women are often uniquely able to appeal to everyday people and to engage them in collective struggle. Aung San Suu Kyi has written, “It is the cumulative effect of [ordinary people’s] sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote humanity's desire for harmony and justice while restraining less desirable, destructive traits in human nature.”

Wangari Maathai has converted the seemingly mundane and domestic act of planting trees into a continent-wide movement aimed at empowering women and reshaping society’s relationship with the natural environment. Says Maathai: “When you start working with the environment seriously, the whole arena comes: human rights, women's rights, environmental rights, children's rights, you know, everybody's rights. Once you start making these linkages, you can no longer do just tree-planting.”

Please join me in celebrating the heroism of these remarkable women – and the contributions of countless women everywhere who stand up for our rights every day -- by donating in their honor to AIUSA’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign.

Make a donation now. »
Your donation will help us carry out important life-saving work – to champion needed reforms in international law, to document and report widespread abuses of women’s rights, and engage an ever-wider circle of supporters like yourself.

Thank you for all that you do.

Sincerely,

Bill Schulz
Amnesty International USA