FEBRUARY 22, 2019 / 8:08 PM / 3 DAYS AGO
Accused of bullying staff, top brass at Amnesty International offer to quit
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Apologizing for a workplace climate of bullying, harassment and public humiliation, top officials at the influential rights group Amnesty International offered to resign in a letter made public on Friday.
Working conditions at Amnesty were exposed in a review, launched after the suicides of two staff members last year, that found “organizational culture and management failures” were the root cause of deep staff unhappiness.
The poor management compounded job pressures for the Amnesty staff of about 2,500 who routinely work on cases of detentions, disappearances, killings, torture and other human rights abuses around the world, an external review found.
Amnesty’s senior leadership team members wrote in their letter that they “take shared responsibility for the climate of tension and mistrust.”
“Whilst it was never our intention to inflict pain on anyone, we must accept that this did unfortunately occur,” they said in the letter dated Feb. 21, 2019.
“Everyone of us is ready to step aside.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-amnesty-harassment-idUSKCN1QC018