The Amnesty International Report 2009 documents the state of human rights in 157 countries and territories around the world in 2008. It reveals a world where systemic discrimination and insecurity hamper full implementation of progress made in law; where equality and human rights remain good intentions as opposed to good practice. It reveals also a world where states too often pick and choose the rights they will uphold, and those they will suppress. The heart of the book is a country-by-country survey of human rights, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Overwhelmingly, the entries show how improvements in the lives of millions of people are fragile – at best – when states ignore or repress any of the rights laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As 2008 wore on, the world saw wave after wave of popular protest by the hungry, the impoverished and the excluded. Too often such protests were met with excessive force and repression – governments unready to listen to the voices of the people.
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