Amensty International

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement organization that works to enforce the Declaration of Human Rights throughout the world. AI is a voluntary organization that must receive money through donations. They also request that members write letters in protest of governments who are infringing on human rights. AI’s main obstacle is that it must persuade people to either send money or write governments. AI uses various forms of agitation to advocate their agenda. Agitation is described as “persistent, long-term advocacy of social change, where resistance to the change is also persistent and long-term.” (BOJ 3) This paper will seek the internal and external constraints AI faces, look at their various techniques used in agitation and examine their effectiveness in this venture.

Amnesty International (AI) was founded in 1961 by British lawyer Peter Benenson and has grown to include more than a million members and supporters in over 140 countries (AI Website). “The object of Amnesty International is to contribute to the observance throughout the world of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration Human Rights” (Statute 195). Amnesty Inter

In conclusion, AI’s main obstacle is that they must persuade people to either send money or write governments. Various techniques in agitation used by AI were examined. This paper ultimately uncovered AI’s successful use of agitation to persuade.

He asks that they please send us as large a contribution as you possibly can to help us sustain the crucially important background work of investigation, documentation and mobilization that enables us to shine our candles of hope into the lonely despair of prison cells around the world (Healy 208).

This excerpt was meant to create such a strong emotional response. It is used so that hopefully the reader will feel empathy for the persecuted and thus feel an obligation to act out. The action could be in the for m of sending a letter to the leader of the establishment who administered the persecution or sending money to help AI become financially stable so it will prevent it from happening to them. The strategy is that the fear of the personal account will drive people to support the organization through action and revenue. We see other examples of the emotional reactions that testimonials and fear appeals hope to spark in the petition sent by Executive Director, John G. Healy. He described the testimony of Bohdan Klymchak. He states:

One strategy Amnesty International attempts to use in hopes of overcoming the internal constraint of gaining revenue and the external constraint of getting members and non-members to act is petitions. This is “when the activists must marshal evidence and arguments to support their position, indicate how many people they represent and characterize their followers” (BOJ 19). AI’s petitions are made up of testimonials, which are first hand accounts of persecution which are intended to spark an emotional reaction within the reader and fear appeals. There is a relationship between fear and action - strong fear appeals yield more action.

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