2014 a 'catastrophic year for millions' Amnesty warns in latest human rights report

Amnesty International has released its latest report on the state of human rights in 160 countries, warning that millions of people are subjected to grave human rights violation.

The NGO accused the international community of not having done enough to protect civilians who have been killed, displaced, persecuted, abducted and tortured at the hands of both rebel groups and governments.

During a conference on the report, held in London on Tuesday (25th February), Amnesty International's Secretary General Salil Shetty said:"The United Nations was established 70 years ago to ensure that we would never again see the horrors witnessed in the Second World War. We are now seeing violence on a mass scale and an enormous refugee crisis caused by that violence. There has been a singular failure to find workable solutions to the most pressing needs of our time.

"2014 was a catastrophic year for millions caught up in violence. The global response to conflict and abuses by states and armed groups has been shameful and ineffective."

Amnesty suggested possible ways to tackle conflicts worldwide and reduce human rights violations and also called for the five countries permanent members of UN Security Council to renounce their veto powers in situations of mass atrocities.

At the conference, were also present Salem Al Qudwa - an architect from Gaza, who gave his account of the life of Palestinians under Israeli occupation - and Ukrainian Yulia Chechiotkina, a journalist from Avdeevka, just outside rebel-held Donetsk, who spoke about the life of civilians in the besieged Ukraine.

Amnesty report comes a few weeks after Human Rights Watch warned that guaranteeing human rights has become a subordinated issue for many governments facing crises.

In its latest report, HRW said that the rise of terror groups such as Islamic State (Isis), Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and the Pakistani and Afghani Taliban has been a major cause of the subordination of human rights.

In January, Freedom House, an NGO dedicated to promoting freedom worldwide, warned several countries are witnessing a rise in more authoritarian regimes and terrorism.