Peter Benenson's Vision:
Laying the foundation for Peace
by Gregory Ablavsky

The twentieth century has certainly not been a peaceful one. Early hopes at the turn of the century that progress, civilization, and technology would make war obsolete were soon proven misguided. Instead, the very progress of civilization ensured that in the twentieth century wars would be more deadly, more brutal, and wider ranging than ever before. The technology that was supposed to have brought about a modern-day utopia instead greatly increased our ability to kill one another. Innovations like the machine gun, mustard gas, the tank, airplanes – all led to greater battlefield casualties. The most potent innovation, of course, was the atom bomb, the ultimate destructive weapon. The century’s second half was marked by an arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union where each nation attempted to outdo the other by making more deadly nuclear weapons. It seemed as if civilization had not bettered mankind, but simply ritualized aggression.

But if the twentieth century was marked by unparalleled brutality, it was also marked by unparalleled nobility. Many people did not sit idly by and watch these developments: instead, they went out and fought for peace, trying to create a future founded on justice and understanding rather than hatred and violence. Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela – their names stand out today as fighters and crusaders for a better world.

The man who made perhaps the greatest contribution to peace, though, was not anyone of these “great names” – indeed, many people have probably never heard of him. He would not rank himself among the greatest peace heroes of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, his contributions to peace have been as great as any of these men and women. He is Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International.

Benenson’s brainchild has been an important contributor to lasting peace. Human rights are a critical aspect of achieving world peace. Warfare and violence are by nature based on power and control – they assert the right to take a person’s life, to control another person’s destiny. Amnesty, instead, upholds the concept of human dignity in all cases, and struggles for it relentlessly. As Mumtaz Soysal said in his Nobel Lecture, accepting the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize for Amnesty International, “Peace is not to be measured by the absence of conventional war, but constructed upon foundations of justice. Where there is injustice, there is the seed of conflict. Where human rights are violated, there are threats to peace.” Any violation of human rights – torture, unjust imprisonment, arbitrary arrest – debases the dignity of human life and creates a culture of violence where power is based on might. Even on the individual level, this leads inexorably to a society based on violence, repression, and hatred. Moreover, many modern conflicts stem from tension between ethnic groups. In the past years, majority-minority struggles have led to bloodshed around the world – Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. By protecting minority rights through publicity and protest, Amnesty International helps prevent the ethnic bloodshed that has marred so many of the past decades. In short, human rights and world peace are closely and inexorably linked. Amnesty International, as a champion of the human rights of people all over the globe, has fought to create a world where respect for the dignity of humanity makes bloodshed irrelevant. Amnesty is founded on the tenet, stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

In the forty years since its founding, Amnesty has grown to have a membership of over one million. Amnesty has had enormous success in shaping world policy. After a long campaign by Amnesty, the 1984 Convention Against Torture was passed. Moreover, Amnesty’s campaigning helped bring an end to the death penalty in Great Britain and Albania. Most important, though, is what Amnesty has done for prisoners of conscience the world over. As Faraj Sarkhouhi, and Iranian prisoner of conscience wrote, “When a person lives in a country where he gets only little information about the outside world, he feels small, powerless and utterly defenseless against the apparatus of the dictatorship. But then if one learns that there is an organization like Amnesty – an organization which is not indifferent to the fate of those people – it gives you new strength.”

Amnesty, however, would never have been founded without the drive of Peter Benenson. Peter Benenson had several outstanding qualities, of which perhaps the greatest was his faith that every person could make a difference. He was not a passive observer; he was willing to act on principle and not just contentedly sit back and say, “That doesn’t concern me.” Amnesty, in fact, was founded by just such an action. Benenson was traveling in later 1960 on the London subway, reading the Daily Telegraph, when he discovered an article about two Portuguese students who had been arrested for making a toast to freedom in a Lisbon bar. Then and there, he decided to form an organization committed to helping free political prisoners the world over. Without Benenson’s determination to make a difference – just from reading a newspaper article – Amnesty International would never have been founded.

Benenson, however, had a long way to go before his organization was off the ground. To raise public awareness, he wrote an article in the London Observer in 1961 called “The Forgotten Prisoners.” The article provoked a huge response, as thousands of people wrote to the Observer, sending donations or offering to volunteer. Benenson’s knack for publicity had given him the public support necessary to build his organization.

The difficulty for the newly-formed organization was now what to do with all the offers of help that had poured in. Benenson once again came up with a solution. He developed the idea of “threes,” where local Amnesty groups would be formed and would work on a prisoner case from each of the three political blocs – First, Second, and Third World. He also worked hard to recruit international members, making Amnesty a truly worldwide organization. He ensured that Amnesty would be a democratic organization, run by an elected International Executive Committee. At the International Council’s Meetings, volunteer delegates met to discuss policy. These organization decisions went a long way toward making Amnesty effective. The autonomy exercised by local groups meant that Amnesty would remain a grassroots organization, and allowed large numbers of people to become involved. By making Amnesty international, democratic, and broad-based, Benenson ensured that Amnesty would have the influence to truly effect decisions made about human rights.

Peter Benenson has contributed enormously to the struggle for world peace. His drive, publicity skills, and propensity for organizing created a powerful new organization, Amnesty International. Amnesty has fought for 40 years to help create a world in which the dignity of every human being is respected, a world where an atmosphere of equality and understanding prevails – a world of peace.