Criticism of Amnesty International includes claims of selection bias, as well as ideology and foreign policy biases. Various governments criticised by Amnesty International have in turn criticised the organization, complaining about what they assert constituted one-sided reporting.
Separate to its human rights reporting, Amnesty has been criticised for the high salaries of some of its staff,Mason, Tania, "Charity Commission has 'no jurisdiction' over board member's payment from Amnesty", civilsociety.co.uk, 21 February 2011. Retrieved 21 February 2011. as well as its workplace environment, including the issue of institutional discrimination within the organization.
Criticism by country
Allegations of pro-Western bias This includes non-Western governments claiming Amnesty is ideologically biased against them, such as those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,"DR Congo blasts Amnesty International report on repression", The Namibian, 14 January 2000. Retrieved 15 May 2006. the People's Republic of China,The U.S. and China This Week, U.S.-China Policy Foundation, 16 February 2001. Retrieved 15 May 2006. and Vietnam.
Decriminalisation of abortion Since Amnesty International's 2007 shift to supporting the decriminalisation of abortion, it has been criticised by senior figures in the Catholic Church (see Catholic Church and abortion), traditionally a strong supporter of Amnesty International, and US legislators. Amnesty spokeswoman Suzanne Trimel estimated that a "handful, probably less than 200" of over 400,000 members had quit over the issue.
The Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in June 2007 issued a statement urging Catholics not to donate to Amnesty because of its abortion stance. The Church withdrew funding globally for Amnesty, and churches in various locations took other steps to sever their ties with the group.
Decriminalisation of sex work
Since 2016, Amnesty International’s policy calls for the decriminalization of all aspects of consensual adult sex work. This is based on evidence and the real-life experience of sex workers themselves that criminalization makes them less safe.https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol30/4062/2016/en/ Amnesty International policy on state obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of sex workers. May 26, 2016https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/08/sex-workers-rights-are-human-rights/ Amnesty International August 14, 2015
In June 2013, confusion arose when a local chapter of Amnesty UK called Paisley Branch endorsed a Scottish bill that sought to criminalise sex work. Amnesty UK had its name removed from the list of supporters of the bill, stating that it ran contrary to its international policy not to criminalise 'the sex worker herself or himself' nor 'consensual sex between adults', and 'no conflating trafficking and sex work'. The issue forced Amnesty International to clarify its position on the legal status of sex work.
When a draft copy of the policy appeared in early 2014, several abolitionist feminists and former sex workers condemned the proposal.
On 7 July 2015 an updated draft was released to Amnesty International members. The New York Times reported that, although 'some complain[ed] that it was conceived at Amnesty's headquarters in London', 'various versions have been reviewed by the organization's national chapters, and a consensus emerged supporting decriminalization for just the prostitutes, according to minutes of organizational meetings.' The July 2015 draft policy was the result of two years of research and consultations with its members, and proposed to decriminalise both sellers and buyers of sex; it was scheduled to be put to a vote by about 500 Amnesty delegates from more than 80 countries at an Amnesty International conference in Dublin in August 2015. The proposal was criticised by abolitionist feminist organisations, including The Coalition Against Trafficking of Women (CATW), who published an open letter signed by over 400 advocates and organisations, condemning "Amnesty's proposal to adopt a policy that calls for the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers of sex – the pillars of a $99 billion global sex industry". Contrary to claims that decriminalisation would make prostituted people safer, CATW pointed to research which alleged that deregulation of the sex industry had produced catastrophic results in several countries: "the German government, for example, which deregulated the industry of prostitution in 2002, has found that the sex industry was not made safer for women after the enactment of its law. Instead, the explosive growth of legal brothels in Germany has triggered an increase in sex trafficking." CATW instead asked Amnesty to support the so-called Nordic model, in which sex buyers and pimps are criminalized, while prostituted people are decriminalized.
In early August 2015, a large number of NGOs published an open letter in support of the decriminalization proposal. The organizations supporting Amnesty International's position included the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), Sex Workers' Rights Advocacy Network in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (SWAN), Human Rights Watch, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.
On 11 August 2015, the International Council Meeting (ICM) voted in favour of a resolution which authorised the International Board to develop and adopt the decriminalisation policy. The New York Times described it as the result of 'days of emotional debates and intense lobbying', reporting that the abolitionist camp's lobbying was particularly 'aggressive', but a majority voted for the decriminalisation proposal as 'the best way to reduce risks for prostitutes' against 'arbitrary arrest and detention, extortion and harassment, and physical and sexual violence'. After the vote, a French abolitionist group announced it would no longer work with Amnesty in the future.
In May 2016, Amnesty published its policy calling on governments around the world to decriminalise consensual sex work as the best way to improve the human rights of sex workers, and rejecting the 'Nordic model'; some abolitionist groups criticised the move.
Misogyny
Gita Sahgal, the head of Amnesty gender unit was suspended in 2010 following a row with the organization's leadership. Sahgal said that it suffered from "ideological bankruptcy" and "misogyny". According to Sahgal, platforming the former Guantanamo inmate Moazzam Begg and the association with the Cageprisoners group undermined Amnesty's support for women's rights.
Reports on the 2014 Gaza War In 2015, Amnesty published the report titled "Unlawful and Deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict" describing human rights violations during the 2014 Gaza War. The scholar Norman Finkelstein, in Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom writes that the report disproportionately focused on the actions of Palestinian armed groups while under-reporting and under-emphasizing the scale and context of Israeli military actions.
Finkelstein criticised the report for its heavy reliance on Israeli sources and a narrative which downplayed Israeli actions while highlighting those of the Palestinian armed groups. By focusing on the Palestinian armed groups' use of unguided rockets, Finkelstein writes that the report failed to adequately address the asymmetry of power between Israel and Gaza's armed groups and the resulting disparity in the impact of their respective offensives. As a particular example, the report describes the Hamas arsenal without citing sources for these claims:The majority of Israel's 8.3 million people, and all 2.8 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank... are now within range of at least some of the rockets held by Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza StripThe report also cited the Israeli allegation that it had intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian rockets "bound for Gaza" but failed to mention that a UN expert panel found that the Iranian weapons were in fact bound for Sudan. Finkelstein also points out that the report cited the Israeli claim that the ground invasion had been launched to "destroy the tunnel system..., particularly those with shafts discovered near residential areas located in Israel" but failed to cite the official Israeli documentation demonstrating that these tunnels had only been used for military operations.
Finkelstein also stated that the report shifted culpability of Israel's attacks on mosques, schools, hospitals, ambulances and the power plant from Israel to Hamas by citing statements from Israeli officials denying that, for example, the power plant had been intentionally targeted. Finkelstein accused Amnesty of whitewashing Israel's attacks by assuming the presence of a valid military objective when no evidence suggesting the presence of a military objective had been presented.
Finkelstein's book also questioned the report’s legal analysis, claiming that it applied international law in a biased manner that favored Israeli interpretations. He asserted that Amnesty International had adopted a distorted understanding of concepts such as proportionality and distinction which, as he argued, effectively whitewashed potential war crimes committed by the IDF.
Amnesty later published a second report titled "'Black Friday' Carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza conflict" on the 4 day bombing of Rafah. The report describes the attack as disproportionate, indiscriminate and accuses the Israeli military of failing to take all reasonable precautions. Finkelstein writes that the principle of proportionality is only relevant when a valid military objective is being pursued. In this case, testimonies from IDF soldiers reveal that the bombing campaign was an invocation of the Hannibal Directive in response to the kidnapping of IDF Lieutenant Hadar Goldin where the objective was to prevent his capture by ensuring he would not survive the bombing. Finkelstein claims that the targeting of Goldin in order to prevent a prisoner swap cannot be considered to be a valid military objective and thus the appropriate legal principle is the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects. The report presents evidence which, according to Finkelstein, Amnesty fails to appropriately analyze from a legal perspective. For example, Finkelstein quotes from the report:On 1 August, amid "heavy bombardment of a civilian area," a drone-launched missile killed a 20-year-old man. Multiple witnesses recalled relentless bombing, shelling, and missile attacks, while "people were running... all raising white flags."The report observes that this attack "appeared to be indiscriminate," while Finkelstein writes that the lack of a plausible military target indicates a deliberate attack on civilians.
Israel
In 2010 Frank Johansson, the chairman of Amnesty International-Finland called Israel a nilkkimaa, a derogatory term variously translated as "scum state", "creep state" or "punk state". Johansson stood by his statement, saying that it was based on Israel's "repeated flouting of international law", and his own personal experiences with Israelis. When asked by a journalist if any other country on earth that could be described in these terms, he said that he could not think of any, although some individual "Russian officials" could be so described. According to Israeli professor Gerald M. Steinberg of NGO Monitor, a pro Israel campaign group: "Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti-Israel ideology, resulting in statements like these.""Amnesty Int'l Finland: Israel scum state", Benjamin Weinthal, 14 August 2010, The Jerusalem Post.