Human Rights in the United States
Human rights don't start at the water's edge - there's urgent work to be done here at home.
Amnesty International works to protect human rights in the United States. Amnesty International advocates for human rights-oriented approaches to national security, criminal justice and police accountability; works to abolish the death penalty; and campaigns for individuals at risk.
In 2014, President Obama acknowledged that torture had been carried out following the 11 September 2001 attacks (9/11) under a secret detention program authorized by his predecessor and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). However, accountability and remedy for the crimes under international law committed in that programme remained absent. The declassified summary of a Senate report into the program was released in December. Scores of detainees remained in indefinite military detention at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, while military commission trial proceedings continued in a handful of cases. Concern about the use of prolonged isolation in state and federal prisons and the excessive use of force by police continued. Thirty-three men and two women were executed during the year.