ABSTRACT
Introduction In recent years there has been a growth in scholarly writing on Amnesty International (AI), specifically about its ability to adapt over time and to incorporate new rights, violations, and violators into its mandate (now mission). Much of the literature has focused on the effects, both positive and negative, on the organization of the changes that have occurred since the end of the Cold War, as AI expanded its work to include abuses committed by non-state actors, identity-based violations, women’s rights, responses to mass human rights crises, and more recently in 2001, the advancement of economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights (Hopgood 2006; Goering 2007; The Economist 2007a: 12, The Economist 2007b: 67-8). But 1973 stands out as a pivotal but often overlooked moment in AI’s maturation as a human rights organization. That was the year that AI expanded its mandate to include
the unconditional opposition to the death penalty. Edy Kaufman (1991: 341) argued that “the addition of capital punishment to the mandate was in many ways a trial balloon to see to what extent world public opinion and non-governmental bodies can affect the behavior of individual states.” On one level she is correct. One of the reasons for doing so was to bring about the worldwide abolition of the death penalty. However, the decision to broaden its mandate was not nearly as straightforward as she suggests. Indeed, it almost did not happen.
