Amnesty International Italy volunteers get ready for action © Amnesty International
By Lucy Macnamara, Demand Dignity Campaign Co-ordinator at Amnesty International
Uno, dos, tres, catorce! Welcome to U2 world! Last night Amnesty was present as the European leg of the amazing U2 360 tour kicked off in Turin, Italy. In fact, rather amazingly, we’re here for the whole leg of the tour. Because for the first time ever, Amnesty will have a tour ‘embed’ travelling with the production crew.
I’m Lucy Macnamara and I’m travelling for the first three weeks of the tour from Turin to Moscow, where my colleague Danielle Solick will pick up and travel through to Rome.
U2 have supported Amnesty for over 27 years and their passion and commitment to human rights have inspired thousands of people to engage with Amnesty’s work. I’m just one of them. As a huge U2 fan, at the tender age of 13 it was listening to ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ on The Joshua Tree (followed by my first ever gig at Wembley Stadium, with Mum and sisters in tow!) that moved me to join Amnesty, igniting a passion for justice that has never dimmed.
Continue reading ‘Amnesty International on tour with U2′
Group work at a feedback and consultation workshop held in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya. 12 July 2010. © Amnesty International
“When we go to the police, all too often we are asked demeaning questions, especially when it comes to reporting sexual violence. Now we need to focus on what we can do to ensure that this doesn’t happen. I think that we need to reinforce the community policing groups which provide an intermediary between the community and police.”
A female participant of Amnesty International’s feedback and consultation workshop in Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya, 12 July 2010.
The fourth of five workshops being done in Nairobi’s slums saw women from Mathare, one of Nairobi’s largest slums, work diligently to strategize how to end the human rights violations being perpetrated against them on a daily basis. They were focusing on security, or the lack of it, for women in slums where violence against women is widespread and goes largely unpunished because of ineffective policing.
Continue reading ‘Mathare women outraged at Kenyan government failures’
A woman reads Amnesty International's report "Risking rape to reach a toilet". © Amnesty International
By Amy Agnew, Amnesty International campaigner on Africa.
“So you’re telling me that someone working in the industrial area earns 150 Kenyan shillings a day… and it costs 5 Kenyan shillings each time you use one of the community toilets? So if you have a family of seven people who go to the toilet five times a day, that means that you are spending 175 Kenyan shillings purely on going to the toilet.”
Facilitator of a feedback and consultation workshop , Nairobi, 10 July 2010.
Communities in slums and non-governmental organisations have built community toilets for residents. However, with an average cost of 5 Kenyan shillings for each usage, these facilities are in reality inaccessible for the very people they have been built for.
Continue reading ‘Normal not to use a toilet in Nairobi slums’
Two women participants of a workshop being held in Kibera, Nairobi, 9 July 2010. © Amnesty International
Blog by Amy Agnew, Campaigner East Africa for Amnesty International
“I’m so sad to hear that Kibera is not on the government’s map (for planning and budgeting purposes). We have a Member of Parliament for Kibera who is supposed to represent us but it simply isn’t happening”.
Resident of Kibera, Nairobi, feedback and consultation workshop facilitated by AI, 9 July 2010.
More than half of Nairobi’s population, some 2,000,000 people, live in slums and up to 1,000,000 live in Kibera alone.
The denial of the right to adequate housing of residents of Kibera and Nairobi’s other forgotten settlements is a direct consequence of government policies and official indifference to the urban poor. The proliferating informal settlements have been excluded from Nairobi’s planning and budgeting processes, effectively treating them as if they didn’t exist.
Continue reading ‘Putting Kibera on the map’
By Dani Valls, campiagner at Amnesty International.
After good media coverage of Amnesty International’s report in the Kenyan and international media, we started workshops with most of the women who were interviewed during the research.
Staff members from Amnesty International and partner organisations held the first of two one-day workshops in Kibera yesterday, where we presented the research findings to a group of 30 women and consulted with them on next steps for the campaign at local, national and international level from their perspective.
Continue reading ‘Meeting the women of Nairobi’s slums’
