Separate to its human rights reporting, Amnesty has been criticised for the high salaries of some of its staff,[1][2] as well as its workplace environment,[3] including the issue of institutional discrimination within the organization.
[12][13] In June 2013, confusion arose when a local chapter of Amnesty UK called Paisley Branch endorsed a Scottish bill that sought to criminalise sex work.
[18] The New York Times reported that, although 'some complain[ed] that it was conceived at Amnesty's headquarters in London', 'various versions have been reviewed by the organization's national chapters, and a consensus emerged supporting decriminalization for just the prostitutes, according to minutes of organizational meetings.
[25] In 2015, Amnesty published the report titled "Unlawful and Deadly: Rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian armed groups during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict" describing human rights violations during the 2014 Gaza War.
As a particular example, the report describes the Hamas arsenal without citing sources for these claims:[26]: 242 The majority of Israel's 8.3 million people, and all 2.8 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank... are now within range of at least some of the rockets held by Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza StripThe report also cited the Israeli allegation that it had intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian rockets "bound for Gaza" but failed to mention that a UN expert panel found that the Iranian weapons were in fact bound for the Sudan.
Finkelstein's book also questioned the report’s legal analysis, claiming that it applied international law in a biased manner that favored Israeli interpretations.
He asserted that Amnesty International had adopted a distorted understanding of concepts such as proportionality and distinction which, as he argued, effectively whitewashed potential war crimes committed by the IDF.
[28] According to Israeli professor Gerald M. Steinberg of NGO Monitor, a pro Israel campaign group: "Amnesty International has promoted an intense anti-Israel ideology, resulting in statements like these.
The debate on the motion formed a consensus that Amnesty should fight "discrimination against all ethnic and religious groups", but were divided over the issue of an anti-racism campaign with a "single focus".
[48] Amnesty later revised the figure upwards to 304, claiming that unarmed protesters had been deliberately massacred by the authorities who had "green lighted" a brutal crackdown to suppress dissent.
[49] The Iranian authorities, whilst acknowledging that some armed rioters had been shot by police, rejected Amnesty's figure as "sheer lies" and part of a "disinformation campaign waged against Iran from outside the country".
[51] In a thinly veiled rebuttal to Amnesty, Prosecutor-General Mohammad Montazeri retorted that, "people, who are outside the country, have no access to exact information and accurate figures.
"[52] In its 16 December press release, Amnesty's research director for MENA, Philip Luther, moreover, did not acknowledge the widespread arson, vandalism and looting apparent during the protests/riots, that led to the forceful response, or the reported killing of security officers either.
The report was itself heavily criticised by two independent analysts who accused Amnesty of distorting many facts, making unsupported claims and ignoring key evidence.
[59] The report said that efforts by Amnesty to address its problems had been "ad hoc, reactive, and inconsistent," and that staff described the senior leadership team as out-of-touch, incompetent and callous.
[61] In September 2020 The Times reported that Amnesty International paid £800,000 in compensation over the workplace suicide of Gaëtan Mootoo and demanded his family keep the deal secret.
Shaista Aziz, co-founder of the feminist advocacy group NGO Safe Space, questioned on Twitter why the "world's leading human rights organisation" was employing such contracts.
[63] On 29 September 2020, the Indian offshoot of Amnesty International released a statement announcing suspension of its operations in the country after the Enforcement Directorate, which investigates financial crimes and irregularities in India, ordered the freezing of its bank accounts.
[68][69][70] Amnesty said that the statements by Navalny, who had been poisoned by Novichok in 2020 and imprisoned by Russia in February 2021, could amount to incitement to discrimination, violence or hostility, met the level of "hate speech", and were thus incompatible with the label "prisoner of conscience".
"[73] In a private Zoom call with pro-Russian pranksters posing as Navalny's associates, members of Amnesty's leadership, including Vahaar, admitted that the move had "done a lot of damage.
"[71] It also clarified that in redesignating Navalny a POC, Amnesty was not implying any endorsement of his political programme but "highlighting the urgent need for his rights, including access to independent medical care, to be recognised and acted upon by the Russian authorities".
[78][71][76] Leonid Volkov, Navalny's chief of staff, responded on Twitter that "the ability to recognize mistakes and move on is the most important thing that distinguishes normal people from Putins [sic]".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Amnesty of trying to "amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim", while Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba stated that the report creates "a false balance between the oppressor and the victim, between the country that is destroying hundreds and thousands of civilians, cities, territories and [a] country that is desperately defending itself".
[86][87] The Kyiv Independent editorial team strongly criticised the report, pointing out flaws in reasoning and stating that "Amnesty [International] could not properly articulate who the main perpetrator of violence in Ukraine was".
[89] British conservative journalist Stephen Pollard wrote on The Daily Telegraph that Amnesty was "utterly morally bankrupt" and that it was driven by an "anti-Western obsession".
[91][92][93] United Nations war crime investigator Marc Garlasco stated that the Amnesty report got the law wrong, and also that Ukraine was making efforts to protect civilians, including helping them to relocate.
[100] On 12 August, Amnesty's German branch issued a statement apologizing for aspects of the report's release and its effect, saying that it would be examined through a process initiated at the international level to determine what went wrong, and condemning its instrumentalization by Russian authorities.
[102] The review found that the "principal factual finding" of the report was "reasonably substantiated by the evidence presented," but that the report had a number of shortcomings, including overstating the legal interpretation that Ukrainian forces has violated humanitarian law, using "ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable" language in the press release, and that there was a "failure to proactively seek Amnesty Ukraine's viewpoint and contextual understanding.