Amnesty International’s management is teaching the world a new lesson of hypocrisy by awarding organization's senior directors with generous redundancy packages. This is happening at the same time when non-managerial staff is bullied, threatened with layoffs or unfairly dismissed.

Amnesty is facing a budgetary crisis – a hole of £17 in its balance sheets – in addition to the crisis of trust. The budget shortfall has been caused by a failure of prudent budget planning and weak oversight by the International Board and management. But instead of tackling mismanagement, Amnesty’s bosses recently decided to cut staff by 100 workers. They said, “this is the only way out of the present crisis”.

Amnesty is a horrid place for workers. There were two suicides of workers in the organization in 2018. An independent inquiry into the death of researcher Gaëtan Mootoo concluded that multiple failings to support the employee of three decades amounted to “a serious failure of management”. Unite, which represents hundreds of Amnesty staff, revealed one in three employees surveyed were “badly treated or bullied at work since 2017”. An independent report by Konterra found that bullying and public humiliation were routinely used by Amnesty's management. The report showed that for non-managers working at Amnesty is dangerous as it may cause damage to their mental and physical health.

As of today, nobody was made accountable of the toxic climate in the organization, and no manager chose to resign. Responsibility must come from the top and trust must be restored. This is why Amnesty’s Secretary General Kumi Naidoo and other well-paid managers responsible of bullying workers must resign. Before it happens - no trust, and no support to Amnesty International!