When the first 200 letters came the guard gave me back my clothes. Then the next two hundred letters came and the prison director came to see me. When the next pile of letters arrived the director got in touch with his Superior. The letters kept coming and coming three thousand of them. the president was informed The letters still kept arriving and the president called the prison and told them to let me go. These are the words from a released prisoner of conscience from the Dominican Republic. Amnesty International has been very involved with all prisoners of conscience around the world. Thousands of people are in prison because of their beliefs many of people are held without charge or trial torture and death are widespread in many countries men women and children have disappeared after being taken into official custody still others have been killed without any pretense of legality. These human rights abuses occur in countries of widely differing ideologies. Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people acting on their conviction that governments must not deny individuals their basic rights. The organization was awarded the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to promote Global observance of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Amnesty International work specifically for the release of prisoners of conscience men women and children imprisoned for their beliefs their color their sex their ethnic origin their language or their religion. And they are supported by amnesty provided they have neither used nor advocated violence. Fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners is a goal of Amnesty International and an end to torture and execution of anyone imprisoned is also a goal of Amnesty International. The effectiveness of Amnesty International depends on its impartial consideration and application of a single standard of human rights to every country in the world. The organization is independent of all governments political factions ideologies economic interests and religious Creeds. It accepts no Financial contributions from any government and is funded entirely by donations from its supporters to safeguard and partiality groups. Do not work for prisoners of conscience held within their own countries. Peter Duffy our next speaker is a barrister in London. He is also a professor at London University. He is a specialist in international human rights law and he is obtained law degrees from Cambridge and Brussels University Peter Duffy became an active member in Amnesty International in 1976 as a student and he currently serves as the highest ranking elected official in Amnesty International holding the position of international chair. Peter Duffy became a member of the international executive committee in 1985 and has been its chairperson since 1989. He is active in international human rights of the entire Amnesty International Organization and has recently been involved in activities in South Africa Pakistan and Eastern Europe both before and after the recent political developments Peter Duffy Reese, most recently returned from a mission in maratha meeting with the King to deal with amnesties concerns. Amnesty International is an example that change comes from the bottom up and not the top down I present to you. Mr. Peter Duffy. Mr. President friends It's a real pleasure and honor to be here with you today. Amnesty is always glad to come and talk about its work and to encourage more people to join us in our struggle for Global human rights protection. But it's a special pleasure for us to be here today for a number of reasons. First because this Symposium is dealing with the Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier this morning comments were made about the importance of the Nobel Peace Prize in promoting the efforts of those who try to deal with issues of peace and human rights and last night and then Urbana told us though the dinner how tremendously important it was to her and her late husband, dr. Sakharov when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She told us of the tingles that went down her back when she heard the news and I can assure you that as a Grassroots member of Amnesty International my sensation was exactly the same that day in 1977 when I heard that we been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What it meant to us was a recognition of the work that we were doing and above all an opportunity for enhanced publicity and public awareness of our work and its ability to help improve the suffering of people all over the world. Indeed. I vividly remember the position of amnesty prior to the award of the Peace Prize and I hope you'll forgive me. If I tell you a story based on personal experience around that time in the mid 1970s. I was out with other members of my local group trying to collect money for Amnesty International. We had our tins and we had our leaflets about amnesties work. And someone came up to me and gave me a big donation. I thought that's very kind. And the person said well. Amnesty International it's such a dreadful disease. We must try and eradicate it. I don't know what she was thinking about. But one thing I am sure is that once the Nobel Peace Prize have been awarded the risk of people confusing amnesty with amnesia becomes less. It really did make a big difference in terms of our awareness. And so one of the things I would like to begin with this morning is to thank the Nobel committee for the help it gave us in promoting our work at that time and the help that the recognition still continues to provide in our work. The second reason why it's a great pleasure to be here this morning is because this conference brings together two countries or rather the peoples of two countries, which have made a very special contribution to amnesties work and I'm here talking about Norway and the United States. Norwegians and US citizens provide two of our most dynamic amnesty sections in terms of campaigning on human rights issues and concerns and in terms of promoting awareness and helping us get the funds that we need to do our work. In the u.s. Section, there is a very important donor program. Some of you will already be receiving through the mail request periodically to give money to amnesty. I hope you do it because we badly need the money those of you who don't already receive those requests. I hope you'll be getting them soon. It really does matter to us the support that we get from people here in the United States financially and also in terms of involvement in our Appeals. But the other section which in recent years made a qualitative difference in terms of the leap forward for amnesties funding was our Norwegian section. which together with the Norwegian television Company organized a Norwegian action day back in 1984, which realized many millions of dollars which we used to make a qualitative difference in the amount of work amnesty was able to do Prior to that we are Publications came out perhaps one major piece a month every week. We now put out information prior to that our translation of our reports in two languages that people could understand was sporadic. We now have major programs getting our information translated into French Spanish Arabic and into other languages where required for outreach purposes. The generosity of the Norwegian and US citizens have made a big difference to amnesties work and it's a pleasure this morning to acknowledge that to you. The third reason why it's a distinct honor and privilege to be here is because this conference is now being held to commemorate the memory of doctor sakharov. For Amnesty International, dr. Sakharov was someone who in the dark days. We worked and worked hard for he was a prisoner of conscience, and we also worked for his wife Elena Bonner. It is special when you have someone who stands up for their beliefs and becomes known and who also achieves the ability to reach out to people in the way the doctor sakharov did. But those there's a further reason why it's important for us to be at a conference which is being held in terms of his memory. It is the doctor sakharov when he was facing dark days was not alone. There were many others people not so well-known for whom his struggle became a symbol of Hope. There are many others like that still today. So for all these reasons, it is a tremendous privilege and pleasure to be with you this morning. What I want to do in these remarks is to divide it into a number of Parts first to say something about the history and work of Amnesty International the I can probably shorten that part because the judge who gave the introduction has indicated to you some principles on which we operate. Secondly to talk about some of the changes that have been in the 1980s and some of the issues that face us as we move into the 1990s and finally to make some comments about in a more General way the years ahead. What are the challenges for human rights activists? What can we do to help me then begin with something about the work of amnesty? In 1961 a few Ordinary People got together and were deeply shocked by what they read in newspapers and heard over the media. Yesterday I told some students the story of the cases which really sparked off the initial idea of Amnesty International. The case is in fact involves students. They were students from Portugal. Who no doubt after it hard day listening to lectures retired to a cafe and ordered some wine and started talking amongst themselves. They started talking and this was the Portugal of dr. Salazar about the desirability of freedom. And in fact, they raise the glass one to another and said to Freedom. They didn't know that there was someone from the police overhearing their toast to Freedom. They quickly found out they were brought before a court and they were sent to prison for toasting freedom. These were people who are not famous people. They are the sort of people who if that had been reported in the press one day would within a day have been forgotten about as the next new story would come across. And the original idea of Amnesty International was that these sorts of cases should not be a three-minute Wonder on the news that if that happened to someone there should be an organization which would remember and which would act on their behalf until something was done to bring about justice. So the first launch of amnesty was called The Forgotten prisoners and it emphasized the need for ordinary men and women to come together and carry on expressing concern about cases like that one. And what started off as a short campaign grew into a much more prolonged campaign and eventually into a movement as a whole? Now in those early days amnesty was beset my all sorts of challenges. It had no resources. It had no experience. It had no knowledge that what they were trying to do with work. And when you think about it, the idea itself is one which is fairly fantastic the idea not that governments or the powerful interest groups can change hearts and minds and get people free, but that ordinary men and women like you and me and like others throughout the world by expressing enough concern can do something to bring about a result. And that was then and Remains the biggest challenge of amnesty because our challenge is what we're asking governments, whatever their political complexion wherever they come from whatever their religious background. We're asking them certain basic questions about the type of way. They treat their citizens. We're asking them in relation to our mandate on prisoners of conscience the following question we're saying how do you treat your dissidents? How do you treat the people whose opinions you least like? Do you tolerate their right to free expression provided they're not engaged in the advocacy of violence, or do you put your dissidents in prison? We're saying to government's how do you treat political opponents? How do you treat minority groups who are unpopular in your society when they're charged with a criminal offense. Do you give them a fair trial or do you put them away after something that hasn't hasn't respected basic due process requirements. Finally we're saying to them. Do you have a bottom line so far as sanctity of the person is concerned. Are you prepared to use torture? Are you prepared to use the death penalty or do you say that there are forms of treatment which today should be regarded as barbaric as slavery now is that's what we're asking governments beyond that. We deliberately as a matter of clear policy refrain from any politics or any involvement. In other issues. We don't distinguish between governments and we don't distinguish between victims who we will act for we have all sorts of rules designed to underpin this independence from politics and our independence of action as has been mentioned. Our funding is scrupulously independent we Not accept government money. We will not be beholden to any major interest our work which does cost money depends upon voluntary contributions from our members and supporters throughout the world every year. We publish audited accounts of our resources so that those can be open to public scrutiny and examination. Secondly, we keep an independence from local political issues. It's very difficult for anyone to feel dispassionate about human rights issues in their own country. I'm indeed the importance of the local domestic activists is crucial an amnesty doesn't seek to compete with that important and essential role rather we seek to complement it by providing an objective International solidarity and support over the human rights issues that we deal with no one in amnesty as an amnesty member is allowed to deal with issues from their own country. All our assessments are done by people who don't have the interest or the prejudices perhaps which may come in relation to domestic issues. All our assessments are made from people who have a nationality other than the country they're looking at Our mandate is focused. We try to be open and we try to be legal in our method of operation. We are a democratic organization. Our decisions are taken by an international Council a meeting of our 45 sections from all the different continents that comes together once every two years and elects an international executive committee, which I have the honour currently to be the chair which deals with matters in between those meetings, the executive committee itself of 9 members also reflects the geographical and cultural spread of the movement. You've heard a little about myself. Let me tell you a little about the other current members the vice chairman of the movement is a Senegalese Muslim lawyer the secretary of the bar association in Senegal. We've got a woman from Peru who's deeply involved in social work issues. In her own country. We've also got an activist from India on our committee. We've got a professor of politics from Berkeley University and one also from the University of Leiden every year. We have one member of Staff elected by our Secretariat and the committee is completed by a Treasurer who's currently an accountant from New York. So we are genuinely a multicultural committee which brings an international perspective to our debates. Amnesty also consists of a real combination and working together of Grassroots activism and volunteers and professionals. We now have a staff of nearly 300 in London who engage in careful research work and produce Publications here in the US you have a professional staff of clothes on a hundred with Regional Offices and a central office in New York and an office in Washington to deal with are campaigning there. We it maintain links with all the major International organizations with the UN with the organization of American states with the organization of African unity. And with the Council of Europe. We send delegations to talk to governments to observe trials to examine people who allege they've been subjected to torture to engage in research. It's an enormous program of work we do but what I would emphasize Above All Is We're Not A Research Institute. Above all a campaigning organization and movement. Well all this is very organizational. You may say and one could say that at the end of all this one says well amnesty started from Modest Beginnings. It was helped by the Boost of the Peace Prize and other things it's now achieved a certain level does one leave it at that. No because we don't judge our success in terms of organization. We judge our success in terms of asking the hard question the original question which faced our Founders 30 years ago of how effective are we in achieving that goal? How effective are we in helping prisoners? How effective are we in helping to stop torture to stop the death penalty and get Fair trials is this original idea of ordinary people being able to implement the hearts and minds of governments one that early works Well, obviously in any given case it will be hard to know what provoked a decision of clemency it's hard to know why a government will change its mind in terms of Human Rights protection and observance, but we do have statistics. Since amnesty was started its taken up the cases of more than 35,000 individual prisoners of conscience. And if those cases the vast bulk have been closed many involving release ahead of the allocated sentence by means of amnesty is from governments or measures of special Grace some have not some served out their sentence before release some died in prison, but all those cases were worked on on an individual basis by a group of men and women in a town such as this for the whole time from amnesty knew that case until the file was closed those men and women will have corresponded with the prisoner with the family and tried to bring about a sense of hope and a sense that appeals would carry on. In addition another very important area of action is what we call urgent action. These are cases that we hear about which are deeply disturbing if amnesty gets information that someone has disappeared in circumstances the makes us fear for his or her safety and we believe they may be being tortured and in danger of death. We will send off requests to our members to get letters and telegrams pouring in Not Just To The Head of State but also to all the officials who might be able to help right down to the governor of the prison or the governor of the military area where we feel the person is held And in more than 40 percent of those cases, there is a real Improvement a disappeared person reappears a death sentence is commuted access is granted to incommunicado detainees torture stops. Because you know, what we're trying to do is Alter the balance. We're trying to say to those involved that the eyes of the world are on you that there are ordinary people across the world who believe that you must respect human rights that human rights protection is not just a responsibility of the highest levels in government, but it's a responsibility that all people given Public Authority are obliged to take responsibility for But more than the statistics what strikes anyone who's been involved with amnesty for a long enough period as I have the privilege to have been a personal examples examples of cases on which one has worked where prisoners have said or their family have said how important amnesties work has been me give you briefly a few examples. My local Group, which I was involved for more than seven years before getting involved at any other level within amnesty. There were two contrasting cases which show the way amnesty groups will work on cases and what can happen the first concern an Argentinian prisoner who had first been disappeared during the so-called dirty war in the 70s in Argentina. He was a lawyer. After urgent actions from amnesty. He his detention was acknowledged and he was sentenced to a longest period of imprisonment and our group acted on his case wrote lots of letters together with others sought to campaign and raise awareness and after around two years the authorities agreed to allow him and his family to come to London to go into Exile rather than continue his sentence in prison, and he came to our group just one Christmas with a cake on which there was a candle with barbed wire around it. That's the amnesty symbol and he lit the cake and said thank you to the group for his freedom. He also brought with him what he described as one of the most precious possessions he had The letters that had arrived to him in prison from people all over the world who had never met who'd written to express concern about his plight. He's now back in Argentina with his family another case worked on by that same group involved in Indonesian prisoner who had been a student of only 14 in 1965 when the alleged coup occurred in Indonesia, he was detained aged 14 without trial or charge until his release from prison age 30 in the in the early 1980s. Now I'll group worked on that case for nine years and that was a case. We worked on and wrote letters on without ever receiving any replies. We wrote letters of every week and believe me there can come a point where group members will ask themselves. Should we carry on doing this though? There are others who will always point out? Yes you do you persist that's the way amnesty works. And what actually happened after he was released was about 2 years later a member of the group who specially worked on that case got a letter in Bad English back saying that all those letters three had got through and those three have been critical to keeping. Hope alive for that prisoner. I've also had the privilege of doing a number of missions for amnesty. Now my role in the organization has changed and I've had experience of going into a trial in an Arab country held under tight security getting through and being allowed access and walking in and actually having the defendants Applause saying now we can hope amnesties here to see what's happening to us. I've had the experience of going into prisons and seeing people who have been detained without access to the outside world without access to lawyers doctors or anyone for up to three years and knowing that what we do matters in terms of re-establishing a contact and giving them hope I've had the experience of meeting the father of a son in an Asian country, which was under martial law. We're his only son had already been tortured had already received 14 years imprisonment and was very likely to receive a death sentence in a trial before a military court. Now when I met that father, I obviously expressed the sympathy we all felt for his plight. And so that amnesty would do all it could he said something very touching to me? He said I haven't come to receive your sympathy though. Thank you for it. I've come to thank you and here's a letter for the group in Japan who have been working on behalf of my son. His son was not hanged. His son is now free. These are cases and there are others where from personal experience one knows that amnesty can have an impact even in those where you don't see an immediate result. One of our main strengths is to try to keep alive the sense of hope in people in awkward situations. We focus on the individual not just on the global event and we say that as individuals there is something we can do to try to bring about a better world. Now to the second part of the talk looking at what's been happening in the 80s and the 90s? Certainly, the last few years have been a period of change mention has already been made of the momentous changes in Eastern Europe. Which have led to the ending of certain major concerns that we had although amnesty still has considerable concerns in Eastern Europe and will continue to monitor that those countries as other countries of the world. We've seen the beginnings of change one hopes in South Africa. And one may be tempted to just focus on the changes that have occurred most recently, but I think we should take a longer-term perspective and think of some of the other changes that have occurred during the 1980s in Latin America that have been some positive signs in terms of the ending of certain gross situations of Human Rights abuse one thinks of Argentina of Brazil of Uruguay. They've been parts of Africa which have experienced positive changes. But also being positive developments at the level of international protection the 1980s saw the adoption of for us. What was an extremely important International instrument the UN convention Against torture, which doesn't just say tortures bad It also says these are the measures governments have agreed that they should undertake if they're serious about eradicating torture. They should train their security people not to use it. They should make sure everyone knows that to torture is illegal. Whatever order your given. They should have an independent system of checking they should have a system that allows for medical examinations in appropriate cases, and they should above all not allow evidence that may have been obtained by torture to be admissible in courts of law. We've also seen recently only last year the adoption of an additional protocol dealing with the abolition of the death penalty at the universal level. So these are positive things and at least one country every year since the 1970s has abolished the death penalty. These are positive signs but against that one's very conscious of the areas where so much remains to be done. one thinks of Albania one thinks of China One thinks of Central America El Salvador Guatemala one thinks of the suffering in Colombia and Peru one thinks of the Middle East of Iran where last year at least 1,500 people were executed around a thousand after summary trials without benefit of a lawyer and without the benefit of any appeal mechanism at all. One thinks of Syria one thinks of what's happening in Israel in relation to the occupied territories one thinks of Turkey. one thinks of countries in Africa southern Africa Sudan's be mentioned earlier one thinks in relation to your own country of the death penalty and its growing use in the United States. So much remains to be done. Let me just give you a few bald statistics. Last year amnesty had on its books prisoners of conscience in more than 70 countries of the world. That's nearly half the member states of the United Nations. We had reports Reliable Reports of torture and inhuman treatment in 90 countries that over half the member states of the United Nations. political prisoners detained without trial or charge in 78 countries China we mentioned earlier the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. But behind that in China for years amnesty has had concerns touching every element of its mandate prisoners of conscience unfair trial torture and executions and in China, there's the practice when an execution takes place, which is done by means of a bullet in the back of the head of requiring the family of the executed person to pay for the cost of the bullet. That is the reality of human rights for a quarter of the world's population today. India is another continent which counts for a major part of the world's population and in India amnesties concerns exist every part of its mandate. So if someone says to you that things have improved and that the need for human rights awareness and vigilance is less because of changes in the world recently. Don't believe them. Even in the Democratic countries of Europe and North America concerns exist. I've mentioned already the death penalty in the United States. I want to also mention a concern which we have for the United States, but also for other countries of the Western World namely the issue of refugees. Refugees have been mentioned earlier this morning as a major human rights crisis of today. The number of refugees is growing. Let's be clear by talking about refugees ones not talking about immigration or immigration control. Amnesty in no way questions the right of governments and states to adopt policies to control immigration of people into their own countries. Our concern arises when Asylum Seekers and refugees that's to say people who are fleeing from persecution and who have returned May face torture political imprisonment become prisoners of conscience will be liquidated when those people are not able to put their case. Measures have been adopted such as restrictions on allowing people to put their case restrictions on the procedural guarantees to allow a fair hearing to be heard and at our last International Council last summer amnesty determined that it was going to try to do something to make the standards of the world better in this field. What we're determined to do is to try to ensure that a fair hearing is given to people who claim to be the victims of persecution and fleeing from it to people who claim that if their return to a country they will face torture and execution and in doing this we believe we're reflecting the will of our movement as a whole and people of good faith throughout the world who would not want their governments to be responsible for by means of over summary procedures or confusing the issue of refugees with General immigration control the return of people to face. appalling human rights violations Now the concern we have about the death penalty and about Refugee matters touches your country. There's another concern I want to raise given this platform in the United States and that is the issue of ratification of international covenants and human rights treaties. We know and acknowledge in the president in the presence of President Jimmy Carter the role he played when he was president to promote ratification of international instruments by the United States. Subsequently there have been difficulties in your political processes in moving some of the signatures that have been attached to International instruments into firm ratifications. Currently pending before the Congress and Senate is the issue of the torture convention. The United States is finding itself. Now in a minority of states in not having accepted the torture convention. I find it incredible that the really should need to be any political debate in the United States on this. What does the Torture convention say it says the Beyond torture being prohibited effective steps must be taken to eradicate it. I cannot believe that any of those affected steps would meet other than with unanimous support if thought through by all the people of the United States of Whatever political persuasion and whatever ethnic origin, I believe you've got a will to do away and to eradicate torture altogether and the United States or not to hang behind putting its name firmly to that International instrument. Now one argument that sometimes used is that these International instruments aren't needed but you've got good domestic safeguards that you don't require the presence of international Machinery to supplement what's already done through your Constitution and the federal courts and ultimately the Supreme Court that is to ignore an important element of international relations namely that it's very hard to criticize governments for non compliance with International standards when your government is lagging behind in putting its name to International commitments. I plead with you all as this issue is now current on the political agenda do all you can to persuade your Congressman your Senators to look hard this instrument and ask themselves. Is there anything in it that is wrong in terms of US policy and I'm sure if they read it, they will be absolutely nothing and I very much hope that before long we will see the torture convention ratified by the United States as it should be. May I now turn to the third part which is really to reflect on some of the changes that are occurring in the world and some of the more underlying issues. And how I see things as moving forward. when amnesty first started the immediacy of its message had a lot to do with the political climate which then existed in that original article The Forgotten prisoners a presentation was done of prisoners of conscience from the east from the west and from non-aligned countries and certainly the idea of ordinary people from the other side of the Iron Curtain expressing concern for people across that divide in Europe and in the world must have seemed an important way of promoting peace and solidarity in the heart of the Cold War period Amnesty preserves its concern for impartiality and objectivity and expects its members to act on cases regardless of the politics or Creed of the people involved. But does the ending of the Cold War imply any diminution of the need for our work? I think not I think if we look at what's happening in the world today, we see other challenges where the need for human rights protection and basic International standards is as great as ever. In the world today and I'm here not just talking about Europe of the East but also all the other continents there is the challenge of nationalism. There's the challenge of ethnicity ethnicity and nationalism in themselves are not bad things. People enjoy and have every right to appreciate their culture their tradition and their religions that is part of each of our own makeup and Heritage. But in doing so we need to respect the rights of others. We need to recognize that the that one group which finds itself dominant in a country or region for a period should not enforce its dominance at the expense of denying the rights of others to express their own culture to express their own religion to express their own ethnicity. That is what a lot of our mandate is about when you think about it. We're saying two peoples across the world, you ought not to stop people peacefully expressing their views and their religions. You won't not to put people who are in minorities in front of Trials, which do not meet the minimum requirements and whatever you think about anyone certain actions should be out. No torture. No capital punishment. I believe that message is as vitally needed today as when it was first put across those years ago. I don't believe the ending and changing of circumstances in Eastern Europe has in any way diminished the need and the urgency of our work and in saying that I also highlight what I see as being a linkage between the work of Amnesty on human rights and the work promoted through the Nobel Awards of peace. Because in reality what we're asking peoples and governments to do is to respect limits on their behavior towards others and the recognition of mutual limits the recognition that certain respect is guaranteed to others. However much you may disagree with them. That is surely. One of the foundations are the peaceful world. I also want finally to reflect on what have been some of the changes not over the last 10 years, but really since the second world war in terms of the protection of Human Rights. Prior to the second world war protection of Human Rights was largely treated as something for states to deal with themselves. There have been a few International treaties notably the minorities treaties after the first world war, but in reality right up until the post second world war period human rights were regarded as something which governments dealt with in their own constitutions and their own laws. Read the universal Declaration of Human Rights and you see why a change occurred? The Holocaust the events it during the second world war in Europe. And in the Pacific convinced the world community that you should not leave the rights of individuals exclusively to government's the you needed had over and Beyond National human rights safeguards international human rights safeguards. So as to deal with the rights of refugees stateless people and people who might find themselves unpopular because of their religious origin their culture their ethnic Identity or their political views in any particular society. That was the big leap that was made by the universal Declaration of Human Rights and it's drafters in that period following the second world war now from then you can see the movement of organizations such as amnesty and there are many other nongovernmental organizations as representing another move forward in terms of international protection saying that International protection and concern about human rights should not just be a matter for governments, but should be a matter for ordinary people that every one of us has the right to feel concerned has the right to express our concern when another human being suffers abuse of their rights anywhere in the world National Frontiers should be no obstacle to expression of concerns. During the last decade we've also seen another to my mind very significant shift again in this protection of Human Rights. The major treaties adopted after the universal declaration focused on saying what should not be done. No torture freedom of speech to be enjoyed freedom of religion and so on but what they didn't do was to spell out what governments ought to do to create the climate to allow that to happen the latest instruments try to move in that direction. I mentioned the torture convention which doesn't just satisfy itself with saying torture is bad, but goes on to say what government should do if they're really concerned about abolishing it the measures of training the measures of Investigation. The measures of Safeguard should be introduced in reality. We ought to focus on safeguards. I very much believe that the next period for human rights. It's challenge is to move the whole debate and focus forward. We have looked in the past too much on sad cases outstanding cases of people being victimized for human rights violations in many ways. The human rights Community is rather like the doctors dealing with medicine in the early part of the nineteenth Century only dealing with cases when people were ill suffering and dying. In the 19th century, it was recognized that more important than dealing with cases of people actually suffering is stopping the suffering happening in the first place. The goal of the years ahead friends should be prevention. The goal should be stopping. The goal should be stopping people becoming victims of Human Rights abuse. We should aim for the day when our children and grandchildren won't have to listen to stories such as the Sakura rocks when that has passed as it ought to do into something which is learned about in history books and people wonder how can that have been? We ought to aim for a time when the human rights violations that we are concerned with become as unthinkable. Today as slavery is we believe that ought to be possible. But to do it is going to require a phenomenal effort. It isn't just enough to have the initial changes the hopeful changes which occurred recently in some countries. They need to be built upon you need to have effective International safeguards focusing on prevention. You need those to be backed up by effective National safeguards focusing on prevention and behind all of that. I believe a key element is education people need to know what their rights are people need to know what the rights of others they deal with our people need to learn mutual respect in this area that calls for an enormous effort of translation of dissemination of information of trying to promote an atmosphere in which the Even writes that you and I are concerned about today become something which in the future becomes less and less likely to occur. We will still need to be vigilant will still need to be watching out for the cases of abuse but let us Focus above all on prevention rather than dealing with cases after the harm has happened. Now, if you share some of that Vision if you share the view that we should work towards a world where we try to build effective safeguards of preventing human rights abuse and that that is something which in itself will help promote the peaceful goals of the Nobel process, then please adhere to President Carter's kind invitation and join us. We desperately need support. We need financial support our work costs money. I can assure you that my committee and its successors will do the maximum to ensure that resources are used effectively. We do a lot already with comparatively little resources. I promise you that we will preserve our commitment our determination and our independence and I promise you that not just because I'm here speaking on behalf of amnesty, but because I'm conscious about the responsibilities that amnesty has to the people for whom it works. I mentioned to you earlier some of the personal examples of cases. I've come across we're privileged today to have dr. Bonner here as a symbol of someone who has suffered human rights abuse and come through it. I know that behind every famous person like dr. Bonner and dr. Sakharov, there are hundreds and thousands of unknowns. I know that the original Mission of amnesty to ensure these people were not forgotten remains as crucial and critically important today as ever. It's been let me mention one case as I conclude a case which shocked me when I was reading up and preparing for my recent trip to Morocco. This is a case of a family called with Kia. The father was quite prominent in the Army. He was a general. He was executed in 1972 died then after the after another coup attempt against the king. In 1972 his wife her cousin and his six children were taken into custody. The youngest child was then 3 the oldest was 11. They've never been charged with anything. They are still in custody. The off he has don't stand alone. There are sadly many other cases of that sort last year. We saw the release of a prisoner from Burma called New Hong who was a Bengali Muslim arrested arrested when she was only one and who was 32 when she was released last year. This is why it's so important to have a Grassroots organization, which doesn't just work through its limited Central resources, but gives cases like the no Hans like the of Kia children like a lot of other less well-known cases out to groups and says to them, please help provide some hope for those people and please remember that if you do join us, even if you don't succeed in getting your primary goal achieved you are taking part in a conspiracy of Hope across The world to keep the best traditions of human solidarity alive. Thank you for your attention.