not to recognise Palestine as a state<\/a>, a stance that was out of step with traditional allies such as Britain, Australia, Canada and France but a similar position to countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. It\u2019s clear Callamard thinks it\u2019s time we lifted our game.<\/p>\n\u201cThere have been moments in your history where New Zealand not only was able to punch above its weight, it actually set the tone for how the international community should act on certain matters,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are living in a complete vacuum of moral leadership from the powerful states. The US? China? Russia itself leading a massive war of aggression. Europe de-united and ridiculous at many levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I speak about the disintegration of the international legal system, it is not just that international law is violated. It has been violated before. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is happening now is that those who are violating the law are arguing that the law does not apply to them, or that the law is irrelevant. And that is why we are entering a different era.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery government in the world has a moral responsibility to help us avoid falling completely into the abyss, and come together to reset some of the rules. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnder no circumstances should New Zealand hide behind its size, or its lack of economic or military power, to say it has no vote to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amnesty International has been closely monitoring what it calls \u201cabsolutely shameful\u201d events in Britain, where hundreds of protesters have been arrested for supporting Palestine Action, designated as a terrorist group by the British Government.<\/p>\n
![\"Police]()
Police officers move on protesters in London’s Trafalgar Square during a demonstration showing support for Palestine Action. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Amnesty has its roots in England, where it was founded in 1961 to campaign for the release of prisoners of conscience, before widening its brief to include economic, social and cultural rights. <\/p>\n
Hundreds of current projects include supporting prisoners on death row, highlighting the plight of asylum seekers, an annual Write for Rights global letter-writing campaign, and the case of a young woman imprisoned in Angola for criticising the country\u2019s President in a TikTok video.<\/p>\n
Before the Paris Olympics last year, Amnesty called for the ban on Muslim women wearing hijabs while competing in France to be overturned, because it was excluding them from sport.<\/p>\n
About 85% of the organisation\u2019s budget is funded by members \u2013 more than 10 million of them. Amnesty\u2019s profile may have fallen in recent years, but the global membership is increasing. <\/p>\n
![\"A]()
A Gen Z protest in September against government corruption in Nepal. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Callamard believes collective action remains a powerful tool, with Gen Z leading the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Hong Kong, all the young people who were marching are either in prison or outside Hong Kong. There is nothing they could do against China,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut Iran is ongoing. In Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the governments moved out. Let\u2019s see what will happen in Morocco.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn just one month, you have an enormous movement of young people who are so influential and inspiring in their determination to ensure they are heard. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou should not underestimate the influence of those movements. It\u2019s bringing governments to fold. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is, how do we sustain that? How do we move from a government falling to bringing social change? That is much deeper and that\u2019s always a more difficult transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as the people who killed Callamard\u2019s grandfather were never held personally liable, many other perpetrators of human rights violations will never be held to account in a criminal court of law. <\/p>\n
Justice is a slow process that comes in many forms, and she\u2019s made peace with that. Truth-telling, she believes, carries its own power. <\/p>\n
Now in her early 60s, she hasn\u2019t lived a traditional life and has never had children. \u201cI don\u2019t know how I would have managed it,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
One of her most transformative experiences as a young woman was the year she spent in the late 80s earning a master\u2019s degree in international and African studies at Howard University in Washington DC.<\/p>\n
One of only a handful of white students at the majority black college, Callamard later realised it had been like living in a completely different country. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt gave me access to a side of the United States that you do not access if you live in white America.\u201d<\/p>\n
A more conventional pathway might have led her into politics. That, however, would have required Callamard to curb her tongue. <\/p>\n
\u201cWill I get a big job at the UN? No, probably not,\u201d she says, when asked what being a gadfly has cost her. \u201cBut I\u2019ve never had that kind of ambition. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m more than privileged compared to so many others, and I intend to use every bit of influence, power and energy that I have to do the right thing. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll I have is people\u2019s attention and that\u2019s good enough for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior writer who\u2019s been with the Herald since 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Agnes Callamard in December 2024 at the release of an Amnesty International report that alleged Israel was committing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[64737,2851,64736,9218,64739,64738,115,3937,2178,64600,26663,71,5269,2294,35698,191,1019,1464,302,8461,111,43,139,1536,69,90,2572,3045,544,2249,52506,7563,2044,61,2179,9863,686,17217,14443,26157,197,80],"class_list":["post-84917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-agnes","tag-also","tag-amnesty","tag-before","tag-broadsides","tag-callamard","tag-calls","tag-chief","tag-donald","tag-fiery","tag-fired","tag-from","tag-game","tag-general","tag-hearing","tag-here","tag-international","tag-internationals","tag-its","tag-lift","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-president","tag-secretary","tag-some","tag-soon","tag-thank","tag-those","tag-time","tag-to","tag-trump","tag-visit","tag-week","tag-whos","tag-wont","tag-words","tag-you","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}