Family of staff who committed suicide felt Amnesty International could have done more to address mental health. (AP Photo/ Matt Dunham)

Amnesty Leaders Leave After Report on ‘Toxic Culture’

Human rights champion Amnesty International is said to lose most seniors in its leadership team after a report says it has a toxic culture in the workplace. In which, the staff described that working at Amnesty has a culture of secrecy and mistrust.

An independent review published in February has surveyed around 475 staff members, who many gave specific examples of bullying by managers that they experienced or witnessed. There were also reports of managers making demeaning and menacing comments in the meetings where staff were belittled. In addition, women, staff of color, and LGBT employees were allegedly to be targets of unfair treatment on the basis of race and gender. The report also points to an ‘us versus them’ competition between employees and management.

According to the report, staff who involved in many interviews has described the culture at Amnesty by using the word ‘toxic’, ‘adversarial’, ‘lack of trust’, and ‘bullying’ since the 1990s. It was also revealed by Unite, a union which represents hundreds of Amnesty staff around the world, that one in three employees recently surveyed felt badly treated or bullied at work since 2017.

Amnesty said the senior leadership team accepted responsibility and all had offered to resign. Five of the seven leaders, who mainly based in London and Geneva, are now believed to have left or in the process of leaving. The process is expected to be completed by the end of 2019, while a new transitional team is in place until all leadership positions are filled.

Prior to this matters, an Amnesty’s staff in Paris Gaëtan Mootoo, 65, killed himself in May 2018 and left a note talking of stress and overwork. Six weeks later, a British intern working at the Geneva office, Rosalind McGregor, also killed herself at her family home in Surrey. The inquiry into her death noted personal reasons as being involved.

In response to this, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, Kumi Naidoo, has ordered an independent review to investigate the cases.