Amnesty International’s founding focus was conscience and spiritual personhood, not bodily suffering

Evidence

In its early days, however, Amnesty described itself as ‘An International Movement for Freedom of Opinion and Religion’. Its focus on the conscience drew on a human rights tradition that, as we have seen, conceptualised the person as a spiritual, not a material, being. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 348

Categorization

• XREF: This challenges the common Elaine Scarry framing of human rights as centered on the ‘body in pain’ — connects to debates about whether human rights protect material or spiritual personhood. — connects to: Amnesty defined prisoners of conscience as nonviolent holders of sincerely held opinions. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 344
• SEED: An essay angle: how human rights NGOs’ self-conception has shifted from protecting conscience/spiritual dignity to protecting bodily integrity, and what that shift occludes.