The Urgent Appeals Desk

We have set up our Urgent Appeals desk so that we can act as swiftly as possible on cases that need our help. The appeals give a voice to those hit by human rights violations, creating a network of support and opening up avenues for action.

Many of the people we help have been violently dealt with by figures of authority and let down by their legal system. They feel isolated in their communities and tremendously helpless. By taking a case out of a community and to the higher levels of government--through the UN or through our supporters around the globe--we can often put enough pressure on the violators to get results.

These results come in many forms as you can read below. However since human rights violations are most common in places where a person’s path to remedy is blocked, the right to make a complaint via the law is the one we focus on. If people aren't able to file complaints they feel powerless, and the problems further along the chain can't be properly studied and improved. By taking our cases together and analysing them we can often present a strong argument to a government about the ways in which its systems are failing, and need to be reworked.

Our appeals may result in individual convictions and compensation, or they may present enough documentation and analysis and promote enough public debate that a state is pressured to improve its systems and allow its people their right to remedy.
We also help to keep victims safe. The higher a person's profile the less easy it is for him or her to be ‘disappeared’.

How does it work?

At the core of this program are our partners who work on the ground: mostly trusted lawyers, NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) workers and journalists. The information they collect is sent to our team of advocates, who apply their experience in the field and a working knowledge of the international human rights arena, and broadcast it further. Our appeals go onto the Internet, they are emailed to supporters, advocates and journalists, and they go by fax, e-mail and post to the relevant UN representatives, national human rights commissions, court houses and government officials.

How can you join?

It takes just a minute to send a letter using our UA online response system, although we also provide fax and address details for individual letters to be sent.  To receive and respond to cases regularly you can always subscribe to our mailing list.

What good can you do?

When the Urgent Appeals desk publicises a case it can be met with action from any corner of the globe.

Sometimes the responses are concrete and dramatic: a lawyer decides to act pro bono on behalf of a torture victim; a judge takes up a case of his own accord; the local media picks up on a case and drags the perpetrators into the limelight; an NGO arranges asylum overseas for a persecuted couple.

Sometimes the publicity alone can help: police torturing someone in a rural prison become nervous and ease up on a victim; or perhaps someone who had been abducted is dumped alive on the side of a road rather than being killed. In this way your letters directly and promptly reach into someone’s crisis, and help.

But justice can also take a long time. When a UN Special Rapporteur or Working Group takes up one of our cases a chain of diplomatic events is set off. The case is communicated to the government in question, that government is obliged to pressure the regional authorities for answers, the local officials are questioned and eventually the agents who committed the crime finds themselves in an unwanted spotlight.

Sometimes our letters are ignored. However even in these cases there is an emotional result for the victim. Where that person once felt that there was nowhere for them to turn because the local police wouldn’t take their case or the judge was paid off, support from our local partners, our desk staff and our supporters inspires them to new levels of bravery, and they continue to fight.

This brings about a change on a different level. Though redress or compensation may never come to that person, every case pursued is a challenge to a broken or bad system, and this will change things for other victims down the line. A topic like torture, that is considered taboo or unpatriotic in many communities (or is censored by the government) starts to be discussed by that country’s disapora overseas and in the international arena, and gradually it gets brought into the day to day discussions at home. Social tolerance is shifted and homegrown activists start to emerge. Finally, since each case that we file is recorded, after six months or a year we are usually able to present a clear pattern of abuse to a government and to the international community. This way we are able to discover and explain why and how violations take place, how the systems in a country are failing people so badly, and how they can most effectively be addressed. 

It is with systemic change that we hope to improve the human rights situation in Asia.

For more a in-depth look at our work on the program, including some background, click on our Extended Introduction or download a Praxis Paper produced in cooperation with the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT) by Shayamali Pumanasinghe in 2007. In the archive you can find all the Urgent Appeals released by the AHRC since late 1997. If you want to find appeals for a specific country or issue, try the advanced search.