The invasion of Ukraine has exposed the “double standards” of human rights internationally, a new Amnesty International report has said, with the West adopting a tough response to Russia’s war of aggression while also maintaining a “deafening silence” on rights abuses around the world.
The UK-based rights organisation published its annual 2022 report on Tuesday, highlighting the state of human rights in 156 countries.
“In 2022, we had the fantastic example of how the world came to support and show solidarity with the Ukrainian people. But we did not have a similar kind of support and solidarity for the Palestinian people, the people of Ethiopia, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said on Monday.
Callamard said the international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “robust and welcomed”, characterised by public denunciations and marked by “strong calls against the many war crimes being committed”.
Amnesty International’s secretary general said because the reaction to Ukraine had been so “multifaceted”, covering many dimensions including the issue of Ukrainian refugees, it made the “silence, the indifference and the neglect very glaring” when compared with other instances of human rights violations.
