Amnesty International Founded (1961)

May 28, 1961

On May 28, 1961, British lawyer Peter Benenson published a newspaper article titled "The Forgotten Prisoners" in The Observer — one of the most consequential op-eds in history. It told the story of two Portuguese students jailed for raising a toast to freedom, and called on readers to write letters on their behalf. The response was overwhelming. Within months, the campaign had evolved into Amnesty International, the organization that would become the world's largest and most influential human rights group, with millions of members in over 150 countries.

A Lawyer's Outrage on the London Underground

The story of Amnesty International's founding has an almost mythological simplicity. In November 1960, Peter Benenson — a 37-year-old barrister and veteran human rights campaigner — read a newspaper report on the London Underground about two Portuguese students who had been jailed for seven years merely for raising their wine glasses in a toast to freedom in a Lisbon restaurant. Portugal at the time was governed by António de Oliveira Salazar's authoritarian Estado Novo regime. Benenson was outraged. He approached a friend at The Observer and proposed not just an article, but a coordinated international campaign. The "Appeal for Amnesty, 1961" he wrote appeared on May 28 and was simultaneously reprinted in newspapers across Europe and the United States. It documented the cases of six "prisoners of conscience" — people jailed for their beliefs — from the United States, South Africa, Hungary, Romania, Spain, and Portugal, and invited readers to write letters demanding their release. In the first month alone, more than 1,000 people responded.

Building the Organization

Benenson formalized the campaign in July 1961 under the name Amnesty International. From the start, the organization operated on a distinctive model: rather than lobbying governments directly, it mobilized ordinary citizens to write letters on behalf of specific prisoners. The theory was that a single letter might be ignored, but hundreds of letters — from concerned individuals in many countries — would embarrass governments into action. The model worked. Within its first year, Amnesty had adopted 210 prisoners of conscience in countries across the world and had achieved the release of several. Crucially, Amnesty adopted a strict policy of impartiality: it would campaign for prisoners in every country equally, regardless of their political beliefs or the ideology of their captors. An Amnesty group in the West would simultaneously work on cases in the Soviet Union, South Africa, and the United States. This evenhandedness gave the organization credibility that purely ideological human rights advocates lacked.

Five Decades of Impact

Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. By the early 21st century it had grown to more than ten million members and supporters in over 150 countries. Its campaigns have secured the release of thousands of prisoners of conscience, pressured governments to abolish torture, and helped establish international norms against the death penalty, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. Its annual reports documenting human rights conditions in every country have become essential reference documents for journalists, diplomats, and advocates. Amnesty played a significant role in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, in exposing human rights abuses in Argentina's "Dirty War," and in bringing international attention to abuses in places from Chile to Cambodia. Benenson himself had a complicated relationship with the organization he founded and eventually fell out with its leadership in the late 1960s; he was formally reconciled with Amnesty before his death in 2005 at age 83. The article he published on May 28, 1961, remains one of the most consequential pieces of journalism of the twentieth century.