The world is experiencing a global assault on fundamental rights and everyone can consider their rights to be in jeopardy, advocacy group  Amnesty International said [24 February 2016]. In its Annual Report for 2015 to 2016, the campaign group said many governments across a wide geographical spectrum have brazenly broken international law and are deliberately undermining institutions meant to protect people’s rights. Nor is the threat confined to developing countries or emergent economies, as recent examples in Europe, including Britain, have demonstrated. Not only are citizens’ rights under threat but so are the laws and the systems that protect them, said Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International and head of its global movement. International protection of human rights is in danger of unravelling as short-term national self-interest and draconian security crackdowns have led to a wholesale assault on basic freedoms and rights, warned the group. “Millions of people are suffering enormously at the hands of states and armed groups, while governments are shamelessly painting the protection of human rights as a threat to security, law and order or national‘values’.” An insidious and creeping trend undermining human rights which has come from governments deliberately attacking, underfunding or neglecting institutions that have been set up to help protect citizens’ rights. “More than 70 years of hard work and human progress lies at risk,” AI said. The United Nations’ human rights bodies, the International Criminal Court, and regional mechanisms such as the Council of Europe and the Inter American Human Rights system are being undermined by governments attempting to evade oversight of their domestic records. Amnesty International said it is calling on governments to politically support and fully fund systems that exist to uphold international law and to protect people’s rights. Amnesty International has documented how many governments have brazenly broken international law in 2015 in their national contexts: more than 122 states tortured or otherwise ill-treated people and 30 or more illegally forced refugees to return to countries where they would be in danger. In at least 19 countries, war crimes or other violations of the “laws of war” were committed by governments or armed groups. Amnesty International is also warning of a worrying trend among governments increasingly targeting and attacking activists, lawyers and others who work to defend human rights. “Instead of recognizing the crucial role these people play in society, many governments...