International system on brink of collapse, says Amnesty report

PETALING JAYA: Amnesty International has released its State of the World’s Human Rights Report 2023/24, which highlighted numerous violations from conflicts globally, especially between Palestine and Israel.

"We are concluding that the international system that was set up after 1948 is on the brink of collapsing.

"All the international institutions that were established to protect peace and security globally are not delivering because they are intentionally disrupted or weakened," said its secretary general Agnès Callamard during the report launch on Tuesday (April 23).

She said that the United States, in order to protect Israel from international scrutiny, has weakened the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

She added that the ongoing humanitarian crisis in other parts of the world proves the potential collapse.

Examples, she said, can be seen in the war between Russia and Ukraine and also the crisis in Sudan and Ethiopia, where the international institutions were slow to act.

"We don’t make this kind of statement in a vacuum," she said.

Furthermore, the report also delved into human rights violations in artificial intelligence (AI).

Amnesty adviser on AI and human rights technology Matt Mahmoudi said that their research had shown that these technologies were rolled out in a way that violates international human rights law.

"AI driven surveillance technology and facial recognition are used to reinforce arbitrary restrictions on freedom of movement," he said.

This was done in Palestinian territories, he said, where face recognition was used to monitor the movement of Palestinians by the Israelis.

"The fact that these technologies have not been banned... shows us that we are in no place to accept the evolution and acceleration of AI technologies without legal safeguards," he said.

Although serious human rights violations had persisted, Callamard said that the pushback from the community was evident.

"An unprecedented number of people have taken to the streets to voice dissent," she said.

The full report can be accessed on the Amnesty International website.