Links

Amnesty International / Amnesty International Australia. If you think “human rights” is an abstract and ethereal topic, imagine the following scenario. You've just served a lengthy prison sentence for doing nothing more than peacefully expressing your political views. While in prison, you were subjected to such severe ill-treatment that your health has been permanently damaged. When you appeal to the authorities for compensation, you are immediately sentenced to another ten years on a charge of “incitement to subvert state power”, and your sister, who helped you mount the appeal, is sentenced to three years in a labour camp. This is a real case, one of Amnesty's February/March 2002 Worldwide Appeals. Amnesty International exposes this kind of grotesque injustice, puts pressure on the perpetrators, and works to strengthen the local and international laws and institutions that defend the basic rights that everyone on the planet ought to be able to take for granted.
Médecins Sans Frontières / MSF Australia is active around the world, battling outbreaks of disease in refugee camps and war zones, as well as tackling longer-term problems such as the drug-resistant tuberculosis sweeping the former Soviet republics, and malaria, sleeping sickness, and HIV in Africa.
The Oxfam federation (which includes Oxfam Australia), is involved in both emergency responses to famines and natural disasters, and vital development projects which improve basic infrastructure such as water supplies and sanitation, and assist communities to become more resilient and self-sufficient.